---------------------------♦----------------------------- INTRODUCTION

The first post independence comprehensive study on the status of ‘education’ in India completed in 1966 gave a major thrust to the idea of alround development of the child’s personality and intellect. It elaborated on the need for physical, intellectual and spiritual development of the child in equal measure. But even in the current years there is still mere lip service to these ideals. Parents want the child to shine in academics, no matter at what cost. Teachers see children’s examination performance as a measure of their own worth. Schools rate each other on the basis of their students performance at board examinations. In other words, academic achievement seems to be the ultimate goal in every one’s mind. In attempts to pursue this goal, all concerned seem to deny the existence of the role of the affective in student’s performance. They appear to assume that intellectual performance is divorced from any feeling or perceptions the student might have. School environment as perceived by students has an advantage of characterizing the setting through the eyes of the actual participants. Students have a good advantage point to make judgements about classrooms because they have encountered several learning environments and have enough time in a class to form accurate impressions. One of the major aims of the education is the development of wholesome personality. Family is the socio-biological unit that exerts the greatest influence on the development and perpetuation of the individual’s behaviour. Next to home, school is the most important experience in the process of development of children. Both the environments, share influential place in child’s life and also contribute to the development of children. School is the second home to children. Teachers and parents have greater responsibility to foster mental health status of the students. At times in adverse conditions the school may also substitute the home situations and meets the emotional needs of those neglected in the home. Pupils perception, or attitude towards the

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co-students, curriculum, methods of teaching, facilities available in the classroom and teacher-student interaction. In the school system, classroom is the most vital one for the transactional business going on between school and the society. The uniqueness of the classroom is due to the type of membership enjoyed by its members. The membership is not only mandatory but members are also more or less similar in age and achievement level. As a work group, the classroom group assembles together for the purpose of learning, which is held deliberately and in a planned manner. Naturally in that teaching learning situation, social interaction, the main theme behind the formation of any group, occurs compulsorily as well as accidentally. The process of social interaction implies that type of relationship between persons where the behaviour of one is the stimulus to the behaviour of other thus it becomes reciprocal. In the present era schools have a greater responsibility than even before to help the students to develop appropriate behaviour patterns. The school is the chief continuing and supplementing institution in which children develop sound mental health. The school is charged with realization, human relationships, economic efficiency and civic responsibility. School experiences are designed to enhance growth and development, stimulate learning and to develop good behavioural patterns. The experience at school and school curriculum contribute to child’s feeling of personal worth, social competence, in winning acceptance from associates, satisfaction for the students to play and to accomplish purposeful tasks and develop interests and activities which would promote social values.

School environments as observed by understudies has leverage of describing the setting through the eyes of the true members. Learners have an exceptional point of interest focus to make judgements about classrooms on the grounds that they have experienced a few studying environments and have enough time in a class to shape correct impressions. The identified expositive expression is put forth here under. Concepts and definitions: The classroom is a studying environment where face to face time happen around instructors, people and studying takesplace. Studying environment ought to be constructivist in nature captivating learners in sense making or thinking. Dave (1965) described instructive environment or school nature "as the conditions, techniques and mental stimuli which influence the instructive fulfillment of the kid". throughout their school existence in terms of educator-student communication". The classroom environment comprises of instructor back, educating material, assignment introduction, club, study propensities, association, sympathy, erosion, withdrawal and so on. Student’s perception of school learning environment: School environment may consist of both negative and positive characteristics, which affects the perception of the students. The classroom environment decide the perception of the classroom environment by the students. Students perception of school learning environment on academic achievement: Student perceptual limit additionally have an orientation on discernment of classroom environment coming about as downtrodden or exceptional. People' discernment of scholastic atmosphere in a school pushes their positive or a negative disposition towards their work at school. The aforementioned mentalities are bound to have an in number impact on their scholarly exhibition. Underprivileged disposition show themselves in undesirable conduct for example heedlessness and truancy which inturn influences their scholarly exhibition.

Over the last 30 years, environmental education (EE) has been one of the main interests of school organizations, local communities, the private sector, and local governments. These organizations demand that schools include EE in the curriculum of K-12 education, but lack a plan to establish an environmental education curriculum that unifies an effective approach to teaching environmental education. Most programs, according to the North American Association of Environmental Educators (NAAEE) (Ballard & Pandya, 1990), rely on a series of environmental activities that can be incorporated into any course within an existing curriculum. Such approaches are called “an interdisciplinary infusion of environmental topics” and as add-ins or add-ons crowd an already full curriculum (Disinger, 1997). The Intergovernmental Conference on Environmental Education (UNESCO, 1978) recommended the primary categories of environmental education curriculum goals and objectives of: (a) awareness, (b) knowledge, (c) attitudes, (d) skills, and (e) participation. While these components have been cited in many documents, articles, and books in the last decade (Athman & Monroe, 2000; Callicott & Rocha, 1996; Day & Monroe, 2000; Gough, 1997; Palmer, 1998), not all authors agree upon the degree of importance of one objective over the other. However, there are reoccurring concepts that are mentioned frequently in the literature, specifically awareness, knowledge,

approach to environmental curriculum development. As discussed by Gough (1997), EE curricula have been too abstract and fragmentary, and have been unsuccessful in preparing individuals to face changing and complex realities of environmental problems. According to Orr (1992), EE is often regarded as an extra in the curriculum, not as a core requirement. In his opinion, “all education is environmental education” (p.90). This statement may sound radical and biased; however it allows the opportunity to see education as relevant to the challenge of building a sustainable and environmentally conscience society. Such an approach to curriculum has been documented in the works of curricularists from the reconstructivist school of thought. As early as 1932, George Counts urged educators to utilize education as an agent of change in order to address social issues of his day. Ornstein and Hunkins (1998) drew a parallel of Counts’ position on the role of education in social reform to those of modern day proponents of social reconstructionism as society faces the challenges of “racial, ethnic and sexual inequality; poverty, unemployment and welfare; computers and technology; political oppression and war; environmental pollution; disease; hunger; AIDS; and depletion of the earth’s resources” (p.51). The role of the teacher, according to social reconstructivist curriculum planners is to serve as an agent of change and reform by making students aware of problems confronting humanity and by creating opportunities for students to solve such problems.

In today’s competitive world, education is an important means for the socially disadvantaged people to raise their standard of living, education has an important role to play in development of the country. Scholarly fulfillment is described as learning procured and abilities advanced in school subjects, usually showed by imprints acquired in tests in a twelve-month examination. Accomplishment is the sparkling crown which reflects a feeling of genuineness, realism and perserversence on the part of achievers and moreover folks, educators and all those serving to realize it, and in this manner an effect of didirectional comes about. Scholastic cause is pointed to as the necessity for actualization. Ahmed (1998). Actualization conduct may be characterized as any movement administered of adding on support where open models of perfection are material. Rajamanickam and Vasanthal (1993) stated that academic fulfillment implies fulfillment a learner makes in school to be It is essential to comprehend the parts of parental inclusion that influence scholastic accomplishment. The term parental inclusion has been utilized to point to diverse sorts of parental actions for example rendering general scholastic direction and help (Bloom, 1984), screening every day exercises and school advancement of kids (Keith, Reimers, Feshrmann, Pattebaum and Aubey, 1986), and cooperating in school occasions (Stevenson and Baker, 1987). Certain agents have emphasised one particular measurement of parental inclusion, while others, have utilized worldwide measures. There is, in any case, a requirement to keep tabs on assorted parts of guardian's association.

The citizenry of the study comprised of High School Children from 8th, 9th and 10th class learners with an age run of 12-16 years examining in helped and unaided coeducational High Schools of Dharwad city. A preparatory overview was completed to gather qualified data noticing the aggregate number of private and administration schools in Dharwad city. The record of administration and nongovernment schools was gotten from the workplace of the District Education Officer Dharwad. There were 41 High Schools in Dharwad city. Near them two were legislature, 27 supported besides 12 unaided High Schools. Near the aforementioned 8 were single sex schools, and 33 coeducation schools. There were five schools with English medium, 20 schools with Kannada medium and 7 schools with both Kannada and English medium of direction. Out of the aforementioned 8 coeducational High Schools were chosen correspondingly by medium of guideline with two every (Fig.1). From each of the chose High Schools and from each of the class (8th, 9th, 10th) one and only one area of the scholars were chosen haphazardly. From the chose segment at least 5 every young men and young ladies from every one of the three classes were haphazardly chosen. Consequently the aggregate example for the study constituted 240 youngsters.

The study aimed to know the academic learning environment of student from aided and unaided co-educational high schools and also the factors that influence the academic achievement of children through correlation design. Further, differential design was used to compare the academic learning

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Data collection was made by using pre-tested questionnaire prior permission of the principal or headmaster’s was taken from the aided and unaided co-educational high schools to conduct the study. After taking permission from the school headmaster 8th, 9th and 10th class teachers were approached and strength of the each class was considered. Among each of the 8th to 10th classes only one section of the students was approached and sample was selected randomly. Among each section 5 boys and 5 girls were selected randomly. After establishing a rapport with subjects, school learning environment schedule and home learning environment schedule was self administered on students, one schedules on each day to avoid fatigue and boredom. All the selected students from classes 8th to 10th were clubbed in one classroom and tool was administered on students. The children were instructed to give the responses. About one hour was required for the students to complete the school learning environment schedule and about half an hour was required by each student to complete the home learning environment schedule. Two days were spent on each selected school to collect information regarding academic learning environment of high school students.

The motivation behind this study was to assess the levels of cognizance, information, and state of mind (AKA) as curriculum parts in environmental training projects near schools in Southwest Florida. The levels of AKA for the members: environmental experts, H.S. educators, H.S. understudies, and folks, were dissected concerning the four research inquiries of the study. For the purpose of this study, both environmental specialists and H.S. instructors were considered as educators because they shared a mutual interest regarding environmental education programs. However, the statistical analysis revealed some differences as well as similarities between these groups. The analysis of the mean percentage for AKA in the environmental specialists showed higher percentage scores in all three aspects when compared to the scores of the H.S. instructor group. The higher scores for environmental specialists were attributed to attitude (M= 78.2%), knowledge (M= 70.4%), and awareness (M= 69.4%). The difference in the level of awareness between the two groups showed to be statistically significant; however, there were no statistically significant differences for the percentages regarding knowledge and attitude. These results imply that H.S. instructors possess the knowledge and

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