School Population And Academic Performance Of Basic School Students
[A CASE STUDY OF ILORIN SOUTH LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA, KWARA STATE]

Similarly, Omolewa (2005) lamented that the rate of population growth must be tailored in order to adequately provide for the need of the citizen most especially the children. He opined that the inadequacy of infrastructures in school is necessitated by the growth rate in population feature of third world countries.
    The global recession and economic realistic in most third world countries including Nigeria contributed immensely to rural-urban migration. In Nigeria, skilled and unskilled people abandon rural areas and venture into town and cities in search of greener pasture.
    Oyerinde (2009) reports that the resultant is over population in cities and the overstretching of the infrastructure, while the rural communities were low populated and infrastructure underutilized.
Effects of school Population
    Population is a social phenomenon that has enormous effects on the school tone which is premised around the quality and quantity of infrastructures and personnel’s productivity. According to Oyinlade (2000) and Olarinloye (2004), the school enrolment is a strong variable in the effectiveness and efficiencies of the personnel, and infrastructures play significant role in class interactions that could be meaningful if the facilities are adequately utilized, and inducted that school population could be employed to achieve the desired efficiently in education.
    Writing on teacher’s efficiencies and productivity, Babarinde (2005) reported the number of learners determines the strategies employed by the teacher and learners level of participation in classroom interactions. He observed that the number of learners in a classroom is a factor that guides the teacher in the selection of the appropriate strategies in the interaction. It is obvious that there are several factors influencing teacher efficiency in the task of behavioral changes and equally important in the number of learner in the class. He also posited that each child is unique and the number of learners in the class indicated the multiplicity in the challenges being faced by the teachers. According to him, the task of meeting cognitive, affective and psychomotor needs of the learners and reported that the instructor or children handlers opined that the higher the number of learners in a classroom, the difficult the task of educating them.
    In the same vein, Atodele (2008) opined that the low populated class enables the learners to be actively involved in the learning activities while high populated class limits the teacher’s choice of instructional strategies and subsequence low involvement of learners in learning process. According to him, the learners in the low populated class experience meaningful interactions and are adequately opportune to gain or benefits from the abundant experience of the teachers.
    He also observed that the learners in such class (low population) have access to available learning resources such as textbooks instructional material, chairs and tables etc and the materials are effectively utilized to promote effective learning, Ibikunle, (2004) explained that the pupils in low populated class are pragmatically involved in teaching learning situations that are per-requisite for desirable behavioral change and further stressed that the teacher is more effective when he/she handless manageable class of learners with manageable problems.
    Similarly, Opakunle (2006) reported that teachers with less number of pupils enjoy maximum contribution of the learners and observed that the learners are actively involved in teaching learning process. According to him, learners are more effective when they are involved in the process, a fact that is promoted in a low populated class, the teachers design leaning activities that enable the learners to internalize the concepts and thereby apply the knowledge and skills to daily living.
    Similarly, Fawoye (2009) explained that the teachers’ experiences are instrumental to learners’ progress in the class, hence leaders that have access to teachers’ experience display progress in their class works. He concluded that school population is a factor in learner’s performance and the school with varying population (either low or high populated) experience challenges that have direct bearing on her tone and achievement.
Concept of students’ Academic Performance