CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.0 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

According enjoy an unalloyed, an compromising and unfettered priority in Nigeria.  If there is any misgiving about this assertion, it is not with accounting education. It is the danger that beneficiaries will regard accounting education as a panaceas for all their problems.  Where expectation become unfulfilled due to bad planning, then frustration and discontent will set in an accounting professional which had begun a lode star, might and up as a mirage this is one way of starting the oblivious fact that disillusionment can set in through bad planning and negligence.          

Non the less arts oriented subjects can survive even with in the context of bad planning but social science taught in a similar situation will create an unfathomable discontentment. Accounting has been defined as a system of principles and techniques, which permits the recordings, analysis, interpretation and communication of financial information as an aid to managerial decision making.          
The recording phase of accounting is commonly called book-keeping the analysis, classification and systematic recording of the interpretative phase is called accounting the professional aspect of accounting practice. A study of business accounting is therefore concerned with the process of measurement and communication both of business income and the financial position of an entry. Accounting is a subject that is offered in Nigeria secondary schools, polytechnics and universities; accounting subjects includes: management accounting, financial accounting, cost accounting, public sector, accounting taxation and auditing.          
The bedrock of accounting is an understanding of the underlying principles ad application of the techniques and skills necessary for their application unlike the natural science, accounting is not based on fundamental laws or absolute percepts. Rather accounting principles are generalization which have evolved over many years through trial and error and which accounting practice can be evaluated. This is their widest definition accounting principles uncooperative postulates rules, conventions, practices and procedures which have been adopted as a general guide to action by the accounting profession is therefore essentially an attempt to inculcated these, basic fundamental principles and the acquisition of skills ad the techniques in the application of these principles the professed aim of accounting studies is to provide the student with the knowledge and skills required not only for the business word but also for other social situations.  
As it teaches ethnical behaviour in personal and business affairs, such as behaviour include punctuality, honestly, hard work and sanctity of human life etc.          
Accounting is logically reasoning in the form of board principle that are capable of providing a frame of reference by which accounting practice can be evaluated and realization of these objectives can only be attested through the qualification of the teacher and his experience or by way of impacting knowledge skill, it must train the student to be adopted, it must extend the horizon of his interest and must also develop his personality of which some of the aims designed to be achieved.          
Not withstanding the importance of this subject in our everyday life, we still fund from available statistics that a large percentages of the present day student population in various school, have little or not interest in accounting subject. This is more evidence from the mass failure recorded in costing accounting and financial last year in Enugu State University of Science and Technology (ESUT).          
However, the aim of this project therefore is to reveal the causes of student poor performance in accounting subjects in Enugu State University of Science and Technology (ESUT) and appropriate to the causes.

1.1     STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEMS

No one method can be considered to teaching of accounting subjects, perhaps the blending or combination of methods might help the effectiveness of teaching in classroom. But what immediately comes to mind is the fact that the techniques or methods taught in the classroom have only a limited application in the business proactive, accounting, business administration and management where the absence of instructional gadgets such as microphone, Dictaphone, mine computers, calculators, etc. have greatly hampered the progress made by the teachers regarding the skilled aspect of the subject.          

The following question are what are the causes of students poor performance in accounting subjects? What are the importance of teaching accounting studies in polytechnic and universities?

1.2    PURPOSE OF THE STUDY

The purpose of this study is to identify it cause of student’s poor performance of students in accounting subjects  – a case study of Enugu state university of science and technology Enugu.