A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF ENVIRONMENTAL AWARENESS BETWEEN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS IN FUNTUA LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA OF KATSINA STATE

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).