ABSTRACT
The study is a comparative study of environmental awareness
between public and private secondary school students. It examined the
level of environmental awareness among the students of public and
private secondary schools. It also assessed the level of environmental
awareness between male and female secondary school students in both
public and private secondary schools. It further determined the effect
of the school type on the environmental awareness of secondary school
students.
The research design used for the study was a descriptive
design. The population for the study consisted of all the secondary
school students in both public and private secondary schools
out of
which 100 students were selected from 10 schools in both public and
private secondary schools using stratified sampling technique. A self
designed questionnaire titled Environmental Awareness Questionnaire
(EAQ) was used to collect information from the respondents. Data
collected were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics.
The
results of the study showed that there is no significant relationship
in the level of environmental awareness between secondary school
students in public and private secondary schools as seen in the Pearson
chi square result with a Pearson value of 1.000 and a p-value of 0.317
which is greater than 0.05 (the critical alpha value). Also, no
significant relationship was found between male and female secondary
school students in their level of environmental awareness in the two
types of schools used in the study, p-value (0.548). The study however
revealed that there a significant relationship exist between the two
types of schools used for the study as indicated by p-value of 0.007
which is less than the critical alpha value of 0.05.
The study
concluded that secondary school students in private secondary schools
have more awareness about their environment than those in the public
secondary schools and that gender is not a factor as far as
environmental awareness is concerned between secondary school students
irrespective of the school types (i.e. public and private secondary
schools).