Influence Of Family Background On Academic Performance Of Secondary School Students
[A CASE STUDY OF ILORIN SOUTH LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA KWARA STATE, NIGERIA]

Parental Career Development and Student Academic Performance
    Uche (2007), argues that many of the city or urban areas are professionals. They are gainfully employed and with richly educational facilities surrounding the children. Hence, they provide motivation for their children to learn and also provide incentive to reinforce their desire to learn and also provide an opportunity for the children to get better mark than the less priviledged ones.
    Banks and Finlayson (2004), suggested that through parental career children are encourage to read books, try hard at school, do their homework, value school achievement and occupational success. Davies and Kandel (2005) maintained that parent have stronger influence, than best friends in determining the educational achievements of adolescents. Sawell, Haller and Forter (2006) postulated that parental encouragement alone or as a component of other influences has a significant effect on the offspring educational attainment. Dorthman and Dosunmu (2007) held the view that the level and quality of parent’s education available to him influence a child’s educational performance. Bello (2004) opined that there is a significant difference in the academic performance of students from educated parents and illiterate parents. He concluded that educated parents monitor the academic task and progress of their children which illiterate parent do not do. He believes that literate parents know the important of education and therefore has the tendency of providing a sound educational facility for their children. The end result of this is that children will be more exposed to technological and scientific gadgets at home than the children of low educational background. Therefore, those children exposed to modern gadgets will be able to perform better than other children.
    Hill and Duncan (2004) found that parent’s education especially father’s education, as a measure of socio-economic status, play an important part in children’s educational attainment. They also found that mother’s education was a more important factor than father’s education in predicting educational attainment for women from lower class origin.
Factor responsible for divorce
    According to Mobisola (2003) stated that divorce could be regarded as one of the greatest factors in understanding indiscipline among men and women. Therefore, anything that could desire the family is highly rejected and restricted and where all efforts failed in some peculiar cases it result to conflict, disorganization and finally separation or divorce.
    Owa (2003), pointed that children from broken homes can be categorized into three groups. The first group are those female partner who become single parents as a result of marital separation such person face the problem of struggle for survival, running up and down trying to make ends meet. They may have little or no time to meet the needs of their children.
    Secondly, there are the children inherited by the separated male partner. Even though he has the financial means to meet the need of the child, he may not provide the needed psychological, emotional, social and educational support of the child.
    The third categories are those children whose separated parents have remarried. These categories of children are faced with problems of coping with their step parents.
    In any of the categories stated above, the school going children are likely to face the problem of over working or forced labour, hawking, irregular attendance to school and so on. According to Eletu (2000), effects of broken homes on the children include: non provision of school fees and materials, little or no time to study or engage in home assignment after school and general non attention to school because of poor nutrition and care.
Parent and child relationship and academic performance of students
    Dorthman (2006) asserted that the will to achieve and the need to achieve have their roots in family circumstance. According to him, the type of relationship home environment crates for the child goes a long way to influence the academic performance and career of the students. Flude (2005) showed that the children training practice of the middle class produces generalized responsibility and extended spam of attention the world which is initially necessary for educational adoption. These are manifestations of love for the children which are intelligently linked to the actual achievement of hat are through to be appropriate in contact, the child training practices of the lower class tend to emphasis unthinking acceptance of authority personified in the parents on this class tend to rely on physical punishment, which is often long delayed such practice are likely to hinder that help the process of academic performance. If parents can help their children with their class works and assignments this will go a long way in improving to an extent the performance of the children.