A STUDY ON THE INFLUENCE OF SOCIO-ECONOMIC STATUS OF PARENTS ON THE ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE OF SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS: A CASE STUDY OF SELECTED SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN OREDO LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA OF EDO

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

The relevance of education in the upbringing of children can not be overemphasized. Since the children of today constitutes the leaders of tomorrow, there is the need for every society to educate its children as this will contribute to the overall growth and development, thereby reducing the rate of crime and illiteracy in the society. For this is to make manifest, certain things should be inculcated in the individual such as skills, habits, attitude, moral values and prohibits disapproved ones. There should be a combination of formal and informal education given to them in order for them to make a constructive development of the society and themselves. The interest of educators is well pronounced as to what influence the socio-economic status of parents have on their behaviour and learning ability. It is believed that if such influence exists, it should vary widely according to the sophistication of the learning contingencies provided by such factor. But what we see around these days, nothing but nonchalant attitudes of the parents towards their children education. This is done in various ways, such as parents no longer stay at home to see after the affairs of their children, simply because of the guests by for the means of survival. Due to the fact that these children are not properly cared for, some of them grow up to create problems for the family and at times to the society entirely.

This is simply from their unwillingness towards the educational pursuit. Also academic performance depending on the availability of learning materials or facilities, funds and otherwise in situation whereby students from school A perform better in terms of academic than school B, students lie on the above mentioned problems. So without parents not being ready to train their children, their performance in school might be discouraging due to the theory of individual differences. Even when some are being cared for properly, you discover that they still not cope with the system thereby leading to their failure or poor academic performance.

The home is viewed as one of the factors that cause poor performance of students in secondary schools. The problems of why children achieve of fail to achieve in school has always been of interest to philosophers. The home background of students, physical condition of home, genetic and endowment, poor methodology of teacher have been put forth and possible answer and has received a great deal of attention. Socio-economic background is one of the greatest factors that influence secondary school students. With these observations, the poor performance of secondary school students in school work could be traced to the schools’ parental attitudes, socio-economic status, family size etc. the main aim of this study is to examine the influence of socio-economic background of parent on the academic performance of secondary school students in Oredo Local Government Area of Edo state. Confidentially, the researcher intends to provide solutions to most of these problems above in the course of study.

STATEMENT OF PROBLEM

The failure of parents to recognize and realize that the ability of their children to perform well is greatly influenced by the home and this is a serious problem because of their belief that the standard of education of nowadays has fallen. Some scholars have argued that the immediate and remote causes of the problem militating against the influence of socio-economic status of students’ performance in secondary schools. The governments to some extent also contribute to the poor economy of the country making parents not able to send their children to school, and also socio-economic status, family size, educational background, influence of home, place of residence, family structure, influence of peer group etc.