CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the Study
Education is the best legacy parents can give to their children. The development of the nation starts from the family, when the family succeeds in teaching and impacting good values in their children, the country becomes a better place to live. It is generally believed that the basis for any true development must commence with the development of human resource. Formal education is the demonstration of such desire to effectively and efficiently build a sound and strong economy.
Numerous factors have been identified in various research studies to be responsible for the continuous declining of our educational system. Various factors such as classroom size, poor teacher-student ratio in-adequate instructional materials attitude of teachers towards work and lack of seriousness in part of students. With the availability of more qualified teacher’ improved technology and facilities for teaching and learning, educational system in Nigeria is still losing it values.
Education can be an instrument of cultural charge such is being taught from home is relevant in this discuss. It is not out of place, imagine that parental socio-economic background can have possible effects on the academic achievement of children in school. Whatsoever affect the developmental stage of children would possibly affect their education on disposition of it.
Parental status is one of such variables when a moments nutritional status improves, so too does the nutrition of her young children. The cultural background of the family is determined to a large extent by it socio-economic background. As the child grows up, makes out to the interest under society his/her interaction with it and perception of it are largely determined from her earlier experiences at home.
The family setting and it socializing influence mould the personality of the child. Nigeria, for instance is a society with diverge ethnic groups with various cultural background in areas like family size, occupation and extreme cases, religion. These factors post their own restrictions on educational upbringing of children.
The social setting or mode of the family and extended family system may equally influence the academic performance of a child and by extension, their educational upbringing.
Parental Social Status on Academic Performance of Students in Economics
Motivation is most needed in order to perform more efficiently in their area of endeavour. When certain factors are eminent in a child’s family background, it is clear that the child will be motivated and driven toward higher academic goal. (Eyake, 2007) advised that praises, incentives recommendations are other forms of reward system should be employed as motivational factors to stimulate students to higher achievement.
It is likely that the much a child achieves during his school days is largely dependent on the kind of family to which he/she belongs, for instance, a child whose parent take a great deal of interest in what he/she does at school and give him/her necessary support by providing all the required books and finances needed has a great advantages over a child whose parent do not give him this kind of incentives and encouragements.
More so, students attitudes to learning and educational performances are shaped by the kind of stimuli offered to them by their various environments. This can be considered in terms of the type of family, a home, parental social orientation, educational level, occupation to mention but a few. It is therefore, evident that student’s performance is contingent on the stimulus the home offer offers.
Educational upbringing is not unconnected with the family influence of a child. Individual members of the family, serves as a model to the child as he/she copies from each of them (Adeyeme, 2007) stated that, if the houses fails to provide the child with the necessary equipment, to fit him/her into his proper place in the society and guided properly for his/her future career, then the child is damaged.
An analysis of the percentage of secondary school dropout today entails that such students are usually from broken homes, wiring polygamous family or with other socially related problem. It is against this background that his work is being undertaken, to empirically investigate the possible effect of these factors on academic performance of students in economics in Eket Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom State.
1.2 Statement of the Problem
The gap in performance between economics students and academic excellence constitute a great source of worry and serious concern as well as discomfiture to bath parents, schools, managements responsible for the education of economics student in secondary schools. Experience has shown that among the economics students’ there exist some differences which influence academic performance of students, such as some students being able to pay their school fees promptly while others were often sent away for non-payment of school fees, some students have problem with the provision of school uniform but others do not.
Likewise some students were motivated by their parents through the provision of educational materials like textbooks, pen and exercise books, others were not, whereas some students come to school properly fed and healthy, others not. One then wonder whether influence of parental social status had played in these issues.
In the light of this, the main problem of this research is to find out if there is any influence of educational status, occupational status and parental level of income on academic performance of students in economics in Eket Local Government Area.
1.3 Purpose of the Study
The main objectives of this study is to investigate the influence of parental social status on academic performance of students in Economics in Eket Local Government Area.
Specifically, the study seeks to;
- Find out the influence of educational statues of parents on academic performance of students in Economics.
- Determine the impact of occupational status of parents on academic performance of students in Economics
- Find out the influence of parental income and academic performance of students in Economics.