Author(s): Anugwo Margaret N, Nworie Theophilus John, Nnachi NO, Ugama JO, Egbe Irene, Ikporo Festus
The study determined the level of implementation of science curriculum in secondary schools. The products of education have not exhibited the required and desired knowledge, skills and attitudes needed from them after being exposed to the designed curriculum. The researchers observed this existing gap. The purpose of the study is to evaluate the level of the implementation of the curriculum in terms of the contents of the core curriculum that stipulates what is taught to the child, the instructional materials used in teaching and the evaluation procedures used by teachers in assessing students’ learning outcomes. The scope of the study was delimited to the level of implementation of the chemistry core curriculum in Ebonyi State of Nigeria. The design of the study was the program evaluation research design. The population was all the secondary schools in the state totaling 405. The state was stratified according to the three educational zones. Proportionate random sampling technique was used to sample 120 secondary schools out of 405 schools. A Checklist of the Nigerian core curriculum for chemistry education was used for data collection. Data collected were analyzed using mean, standard deviation and percentages. Findings revealed that the Level of Correspondence of the Contents of Chemistry Education taught in Ebonyi state secondary schools with the specification of the Chemistry Core Curriculum were achieved to a very high extent. The level of correspondence of the Instructional Materials used in teaching Chemistry lessons to the specification of chemistry education core curriculum and evaluation procedures were achieved to a very low extent. The implication is that students are taught the required content areas without good instructional materials, and with the evaluation procedures like written and oral tests and not projects or the other performance assessment tools. These can lead to poor achievement of students and can generate scores that lead to poor inferences. The researchers therefore recommended for the retraining of teachers that will be well versed in the actual implementation of the core curriculum and for government to give more attention to education by providing essential facilities for teaching and learning.