The Relationship Between Class Size And Secondary School Students Academic Performance In Geography
[A CASE STUDY OF ABEOKUTA-SOUTH LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA OF OGUN STATE]

The continuous rise in the growth of private nursery and primary schools are positive indicators of the emergence of new secondary schools which will eventually apply for inclusion of secondary school curriculum in their educational outfit.
    As this sector continues to expand with no defined regulatory body, the consequences of this are epitomized in the astronomical decline in the standard of secondary education!
    Secondary school education remains the most marginalised sector of the education system in Nigeria. It is very unfortunate for the Professor Pai Obanya – led presidential committee on education to Advocate Federal Government disengagement from providing secondary education for the state and local governments where the same federal government has Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) to cater for the basic education sector, National University Commission (NUC) for the university education, National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE) for college of education, National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) for monotechnices and polytechnics.
    Secondary education no doubt deserves parenthood. The contemplation and recommendation for a merger of senior secondary education into the Universal Basic Education Commission as an alternative has its problems considering and huge population of pupils, human and materials resources as well as the large number of schools expected to be built and maintained on a continuous basis.
    It is very pertinent to mention that UBEC came into existence under the purview of international policies and programmes such as education for all (EFA) by 2015, (MDG’s 1, 2 & 3) etc. It is therefore inappropriate and defeatist to transfer the problems of secondary education completely into primary education just because they have similar objectives.
    If tertiary education can have as much as three parent bodies to manage them, primary and secondary education should at least have a separate body each to regulate and control it.
    It is also important to remind us that government at all levels in this country are still contending with one of the most important provisions of the UBE Act which is to make the basic education programmes universal, free and compulsory. UBEC therefore has an enormous responsibility of making all efforts to counter the factors that were impediments to the global realization of the previous programme, Universal Primary Education (UPE) and then the current UBE.
    The only available form of intervention by the federal government to public secondary schools – ETF project, has now been stopped. No public secondary school will now benefit from ETF intervention. Sad enough, no substitute or alternative has been pronounced to shore up the derelicts we call secondary school buildings across the nation. It is worrisome and unfortunate that secondary education will no longer benefit from this gesture.
    It is a known fact that various efforts by the states to prop their secondary education, have not been very meaningful, consistent or well coordinated. Secondary education and its myriad essential inputs of adequate staffing, training and retraining programmes, curriculum demand and implementations as well as structural and physical facilities requirements are big enough to constitute an entire commission.
    The wave of increase in secondary school age students and the corresponding consistent increases in the number of schools call for concerted efforts to meaningfully charge a body with the great task of management. Nigeria education data profile has it that the percentage of youths ages 12 – 17 attending secondary school increased notably and consistently from 1990 to 2008 with 44% being in school in 2008, compared with 35% of youths in 2003 and only 24% in 1990.