THE INFLUENCE OF PARENTAL SOCIAL CLASS ON THE ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE OF PUPILS

CHAPTER ONE

BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

1.0 INTRODUCTION

Educational is the best legacy a nation can give to her citizens especially the youth. This is because the development of any nation or community depends largely on the quality of education of such a nation. It is generally believed that the basis for any true development must commence with the development of human resource. Much then is said that formal education remains the vehicles for social economic psychological and environmental development of any society.

When we come to think of students, they are the ones when learn ideas to become more responsible and productive someday students from the rich and the poor, especially those in Mbo local government area are affected by myriad of factors. Example of those factors are socio-economic, psychological and environmental factors.

Socio-economic factors are believed to be the common factors affecting students academic performance. They have been suffering and socio-economic gaps between families, (Johnson, 1996), lamented that parents become poor due to these hard measure, such that they can no longer adequately effort good education of their children.

Psychological factors also give a big impact on students performance. One of these is street hawking among students. Danesy and Okediran (2002) elaborated that street hawking among students have psychologically imposed other problems like sex networking behavior, Juvenile sequent behavior, which takes much of the school time that necessited the poor academic performance and dropout syndrome among students. Environmental factors also influence academic performance . learning environment is one. The learning environment that is free of barrier or obstacles or distractions such as noise, gas/smoke pollutions and so on can constitute health hazards, which in return affect or reduce students concentration or perceptive or conceptive focus to learning.

Stephen J. Ceci (1997) proposes that the efficacy of a family influence for academic success is determined to a large degree by a child’s family background. In addition, they claim that academic success is achieved only if family background resources can be accessed to maximize the association between family influence and outcome.

Dubey (1979) no other agent of socialization is as important to the total make-up of the child as his family. From the family, he builds up his background. The important identification and self images, has their origins in the family.

A lot of people have risen to high positions courtesy of social class, others only dream of better life but could not achieve it because of unfavourable income structure of parents. Therefore, social class of parents influences achievement. Many parents have high aspiration for their children academic achievement, but could these aspirations could only be realized if the social class of parents are favourable. Due to the realization of the benefit of being educated many parents forgo themselves a lot of good things in order to ensure that their children achieve education. They believe that through education individuals acquire usable and social education. They believe that through education individuals acquire usable and social accepted vocational skills. A lot of parents hope that with vocational skills. A lot of parents hope that with vocational skills one can be productive which ensures individual and group survival.

However, the social class background of a child affects his success in school. A child from a higher income structural or social class background has advantages over the child from a lower income structural background. In a higher background there may be a television set, radio, pictures reading and writing materials, all of which help to prepare a child from learning a school

Boocock (1972) the most important predictor of achievement in school associated with the family is income structural background enters school earlier that the earlier a child is exposed to education, the earlier a child is exposed to education, the earlier the child start to learn. This is determined by the social class of the parents.

1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEMS

The influence of the family background , that is the socio-economic status of parents in the academic achievement of their children have been posing very serious problems to many people in our society. It is argued in some quarters that children from rich parent performance better academically than those children from poor parental background in the classroom situation. But some people hold the opposite view by a arguing that most of the children from the rich families are way-ward in school academically than children from poor and average families.

In the classroom here in Mbo local government area, the teacher teaches pupils together irrespective of their family background. This research work is premised on his erroneous thinking and misconception in our society. The researcher is therefore poised to make findings to determine whose child performs better academically and what are the causative agents to this. The researcher will also find solution to the problems and suggest ways and methods to eradicate or improve upon the situation for the benefits of pupils, parents, schools, education, and the society as well.

1.3 THE OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY

The research was at directed at the achievement of the following objectives:

To identifying the difference types of family background

To identifying the influence of the family background as it affects the academic various achievement of their children

To carrying out controlled study and investigation on home environment and facilities in these homes for children educational development with special references to mbo local government

To suggest the possible solutions to the problems so as to enhance pupils academic performance in school.

Hopefully, when parents are once more reminded of their divine and practical responsibilities of their children, our school system and society will be mere stable disciplined and functional one.

1.4 RESEARCH QUESTION

In order to carryout the research successfully, the following questions were formulated:

Do our parental social background differ another?

Do various parent social background influence children academic performance?

Do the home environment develop children educational performance?

Do these identified problem affect the pupils academic performance in schools?

1.5 RESEARCH HYPOTHESIS

The following hypothesis were formulated to guide the study