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Influence Of Family Background On The Academic Achievement Of Senior Secondary School Student
[A CASE STUDY OF BABCOCK UNIVERSITY HIGH SCHOOL, OGUN STATE]
CHAPTER ONE -- [Total Page(s) 5]
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CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Study
Education
is the best legacy a nation can give to her citizens especially the
youths. This is because education is very important in the development
of any nation or community. Education is the process of transmitting
what is worthwhile to members of the society. According to Okafor
(1981). Education embraces all those experiences of the individual
through which knowledge is acquired and intellect enlightened. For
Nwabachili and Egbue (1993) education is what goes on from one
generation to another generation. In this context, education is the
process of socializing the child to grow up as a fulfilled member of the
society through informal, formal and non-formal process. Informal
education is the process of acquiring knowledge about the environment
and beyond through living with one another. According to Nwabachili and
Egbue (1993) formal education is a consciously planned form of
socialization in a formal setting such as school. They stressed that
non-formal education involve all those systematic programme? and
processes of education and training that is done outside formal
education settings. All these forms of education cannot be achieved
without the influence of the family.
Family is the first social
environment the child finds itself. According to Clifford (1981) family
remains the primary environment of the child. The author emphasized that
family environment has more chances of increasing or decreasing the
intellectual achievement of the child. Akubue and Okolo (2008), defined
family as a small kinship structural group with the key function of
natural socialization of the new born. Similarly, in Okunniyi (2004),
family is defined as a primary social group of parents, offspring and
possibly other members of the household.
 Family background refers to
all the conditions and circumstances in the family which influence the
child physically, intellectually and emotionally Muola (2010). Children
coming from different family backgrounds are affected different by such
family conditions, that is why some children have good family background
while some have poor background. Citing fleege, Eke (1999) noted that
with some families, the background way vary from time to time for the
same individuals.
Formal education therefore remains the vehicle for
human development which must start from the family. There are different
categories of families. The major categories of families according to
Anderson and Taylor (2000) includes: Traditional families-where the
father is the major breadwinner and mother at home rearing children;
divorced families-families that have been reconstituted following the
breaking of marriage; single parent families-likely headed by women;
step families-with new siblings and new parents stemming from
re-marriage.
A family could also be categorized as extended or
nuclear. Extended families are those in which large group of related kin
in addition to parents and children live together in the same
household. This is the type of families prevalent in African countries.
Nuclear families are families where married couple resides together with
their children. Thin type of family is common in Western countries
(Andersen and Taylor 2000).
Families are of various sizes. Family
size has to do with the total number of people in a single family which
may include the father, mother, children and even the extended members -
all living in one hamlet. According to Alio (1995) family size has
implication for education. The author emphasized that the size of the
family determines to a great extent the relative amount of physical
attention and time which each child gets from his parents. Large
families are more common among the lower class of the society. Children
in large families may suffer poverty and lack parental encouragement and
stimulus which motivate their academic achievement (Eamon, 2005).
Similarly, smaller family size has been linked with high academic
achievement (Majoribank 1996) Majoribank further stressed that students
with fewer siblings are likely to receive more parental attention and
have support that leads to better school performance Family (small or
large size) remains the primary environment of every child. The families
begin the process of education and provide physical and psychological
needs of the child. This supports the view of Maduewisi (1982), that the
environmental experiences from family, peer group and school location
have great influence in determining child's intellectual ability. She
maintained that bright children from under-privileged family environment
may turn dull due to impoverished family environment. She added that
mental development influence, intellectual development. This is in line
with Hebb (1987) who observed that the innate potentials of children
cannot be attained without adequate stimulating family environment
because the child cannot do well intellectually. The implication is that
a proper stimulating family environment with intellectual potential and
appropriate teaching methods will definitely enhance maximum
performance of the child.
Durosaro and Durosaro (1990) in their study
attempted to investigate the' relationship between students' family
size and their academic achievement; they found out that family size
influenced academic achievement. Their study reveals that children from
small size families performed better at school than their counterparts
from both average size and large size families. Furthermore, Yoloye
(1989) conducted a study to see if the family background variables might
be useful in explaining their academic achievement. Some aspects of
family background variables examined in the study include family size
and parents' educational status. His findings were that the polygamous
family sizes which were naturally large, reduces the chances of children
going to school in the first instance. In addition, children from such
backgrounds who are in schools have reduced chances of achieving their
goals. Thirdly, parents of such families are mostly illiterate and
incapable of providing adequate motivation for their children in schools
as compare with the literate nuclear families.
The economic
implication of large family size is better explained in Okuniyi (2004)
who observed from his study that as families get larger, parents cannot
give their children the same amount of individual attention. They could
not afford to provide them with so many of the things which will help
them to make the best possible use of their years at school such as
educational aids, and quiet comfortable rooms in which to do homework
undisturbed by the television, outings to places of interest, leisure
lime pursuits, and opportunities for traveling. What is most probably
important of all, according to him is the fact that the parents of large
families were found not to talk with their children to the same extent
as parents of small families.
Another aspect of family environmental
factor is the structure of the family. Structurally, a family is either
broken or intact. A broken family in this context in one that is not
structurally intact for various reasons; such as death of a parent,
divorce, separation, desertion and illegitimacy in which case, the
family was never completed (Coukline 1996). Life in a single parent
family can be stressful for both the child and the parent and such
families are faced with the challenges of diminished financial
resource?!, assumptions of new roles and responsibilities, establishment
of new pattern in intra- familial interactions and reorganization or
routines and schedules, (Agulanna 1999).
In single parent families,
children may suffer some psychological and social problems which affect
their academic performance. Danesy and Okedian (2002), in theirstudy,
lamented that street hawking among secondary school students have
psychologically imposed other problems, such as sex networking behavior,
juvenile delinquent behavior, which take much of the student school
time that necessitated the poor academic performance and drop out
syndrome noticed among young school students. They also lamented that
the maternal and paternal deprivation of essential needs of the young
students have promoted their poor performance in public examination as
JSCE, WASSCE and NECO. Similarly, (Okunniyi 2004) asserted that a child
who suffer maternal and paternal deprivation may experience academic
problems including truancy in the school. This is because the child may
lack some necessities like school fees, books and uniforms. These
conditions, according to the authors, are not conducive for effective
parenting because when the single parents are overburdened by
responsibilities and by the own, emotional, reaction to their situation,
they often become irritable, impatient and insensitive to their
children's needs.
Apart from the structural pattern of the family,
another powerful variable in the family that determines the students’
academic achievement is the family socio-economic status (SES).
According to (Jeynes 2002), the socio-economic status of a child h most
commonly determined by combining portent's educational level,
occupational status, and income level. Social class and economic status
of the parents determine the type of school and the standard of training
they desire for their children. The occupation or profession of the
parents, the educational level and whether the mothers are working or
non-working mothers places them at an advantage or disadvantage to
evaluate their children's academic work and monitor their progress.
CHAPTER ONE -- [Total Page(s) 5]
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ABSRACT - [ Total Page(s): 1 ]The study examined the influence of family background on the academic achievement of senior secondary school student in babcock university high school, ogun state.More specifically, the study sought to assess the academic performance within sound family background and paltry family background in Senior secondary schools.The study consist of all senior secondary school students in Babcock high school (SSS1-3), simple random sampling technique was use to pick the respondents and 122 senior secon ... Continue reading---
