1.1 Introduction
The study of adolescents schooling is important to social scientists and policy makers who are interested in influencing adolescent development, because it is through educational institution that the greatest number of young people can easily be reached. Sociologists have observed on numerous occasions that schools in large complex societies are expected to help sort adolescents for societal roles and occupational positions. At present the larger society assigns the job of assessing and evaluating student growth and potential, in large part, to teachers. How well students perform on tests, the grade they receive and the judgments their teachers make about their academic performance have important, long run consequences for both students and society.
The performance of students in academic tasks has always been of special interest to educators and stake-holders in education industry, because most of the compliments by the public that standard of education is falling are in relation to the poor performance of student in public examination in recent times. Across the nation, parents, educators and policy makers are committed to improving the academic achievement of children in their communities. Achievement is typically measured by performance on standardized tests and the federal ministry of Education has mandated that schools improve students test performance (National Policy of Education). The National Union of teachers has called for ‘clear, rigorous academic standards tests to measures whether students are meeting the standards; and a system to hold schools, school districts and students accountable’ (NUT seminar on outcome learning, 2001). In order to measure these goals; schools must improve their students performance on standardized tests. Grades, while not the only or necessarily the best measure of academic performance is a strong predictor of whether a student will drop out from high school (Battin Pearson, 2000).
Reducing dropout rates and raising the high school graduation rate to 90 percent is an ongoing national goal for many developing countries. Finalyson (1998) expressed that the students’ school performance can be influenced by various factors such as parental socio-economic status, family size, and aspiration of parents and characteristics of the students such as ability, motivation and some personality traits as well as the quality of the school that the students attend. On learners’ characteristics and contextual effects as determinants of students’ performances, it was found that school factors such as teachers’ characteristics (academic qualifications, relevant professional training, work experience, co-operative attitudes, research interest and publications) are the most significant predictors of students’ performances! (Osunkalu, 2001).
A study of possible predicators of students’ performance at the WASCE, Fagbamiye (1986) confirmed that good quality schools in terms of school facilities with young students who perform better in the entrance examinations tend to perform better in the WASCE regardless of the type of school, and other related factors. Ogbazi (2002) study on Education Opportunity and Academic Performance of Secondary School Students in an urban area discovered that variations in individual ability, need for achievement, level of anxiety and parents’ educational occupational attainment account for variation in academic performance of Secondary School Students in an urban area discovered that variations in an urban area discovered that variations in individual ability, need for achievement, level of anxiety and parents’ educational and occupational attainment account for variation in academic performance of secondary school students. Avoseh (2004) further remarked that within the African context, the school has been found to be more important that the family or other non-school factors in explaining variations in academic performance at the secondary school level.
What constitute adolescents sexual behaviour Research concerning sexual activity is difficult to perform. First as with just about everything, people’s definitions of sex change from person, and across gender (Bogart, Cecil, Wagstaff, Pinkerton and Abramson, 2000) Bogart et al found that sex was usually defined as “vaginal or anal intercourse” and that some people also define “oral intercourse” as sex. The need for clearly defined operational definitions is extremely important when dealing with a topic such as extremely important when dealing with a topic such as sexual activity.
Knox, Sturdivant and Zuzman (2001) found that women reported to be more probable than men to have stricter requirements about their potential sexual partner before having sexual intercourse with that person. Sexuality is a fundamental characteristic of human life, important for health, happiness, individual development and indeed for the preservation of the human race (Friedman, 2002). During adolescent, there are feeling of self-consciousness and increasing awareness of sexuality and feelings of sexual desire (Arkutu and Bendon, 2004). The term sex has been defined variously by different people. Sex is defined by Oxford Advance Learner Dictionary of Current English as being male and female. Its fundamental distinction relating to production, that is the act of giving birth to young ones. Therefore, sex generally can b e defined as the primary role of reproduction and secondarily, it serves as a pleasure driving medium. Adolescents are in the genital stage of Freud’s psychosexual stage of development. adolescent is an important stage for the development of human sexual attitudes and behaviour and due to hormonal changes, there is an increase in adolescent. Erickson (1982) posits that sexual maturity is a central aspect in the identity achievement of adolescent feeling and acting like an adult or being recognized as one.
