THE INFLUENCE OF HOME ENVIRONMENT ON THE ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE OF A CHILD

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

The academic performance of any child cannot be separated from the home environment in which the child grows up. A healthy home environment offers emotional security to a child. The schools cannot simply provide a continuation of the home environment, but they can play an inestimable role in laying the foundation for the child learn how to read and write, however, this influence is characterized by various factors such as the parents home background learning facilities, levels of parents educational attainment and other socio cultural issues. Over the years, the society had recorded a persisted increase in the rate of poor performance in the various schools examinations such as the senior secondary school examination (S.S.C.E). Comments from educators have shown that the blame from look of performance has been as a result of neglect and carefree attitude towards academic works by students and parents. It is against this background that the researcher has decided to investigate on the academic performance of a child. There are innumerable factors which affect a child academic performance as stated above.

It is obvious that a child academic performance is directly related to his her environment as well as learning facilities and other socio cultural issues. Every child is born with the same intellectual ability, but a good and conducive environment with adequate learning facilities will help to boost the intellectual and academic capability of the child. Parents from good learning environment will always have good attitudes towards education and provide learning materials such as the television, instructional video tract, books and journals e.t.c that will facilitate the learning process. These as a matter of fact can give a child an edge over his or her counterparts in an environment with poor learning facilities. Educated parents will always express the belief that it is important to help a child with his or her home work and to review the school work that the child had done but a child from a poor home environment to a large extent is deprived of such opportunities and thus, he or she struggles to service he teaching and learning process. A student in this category is therefore not confident and consisted. Hence he or she experiences how academic performance hence, the motivation of any intelligent child towards learning is being accelerated by the positive influence of his or her environment, while others are negatively affected in terms of their poor home environment.

STATEMENT OF PROBLEM

The importance of education in an individual cannot be over emphasized. Education has a long lasting impact on ones life. For example the acquisition of knowledge and skills and all other things that is worthwhile, which are transmitted to a person through formal and informal education determines his or her potential in future. Basically, we understand that the home is the first school for a child where he or she is taught the basics norms and values by the parents before the child leaves for the formal education. Contrary to popular opinion. Learning and reading begins in school but the first foundation of the child begins in school but the first foundation of the child begins at home. (Binkley 1998) Base on those facts, this research has to do with asking the following questions on why does student home environment affect student performance in school. · Unconducive learning environment reduces a child academic performance · Can the attitude of illiterate parents affect the child performance · Can the attitudes of illiterate parents of affect the child’s performance.