Parental Background and Academic Achievement of Students in Secondary Schools in Chemistry

Parental Background and Academic Achievement of Students in Secondary Schools in Chemistry

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine Parental Background and Academic Achievement of Secondary Schools Students in Chemistry in Ibesikpo Asutan Local Government Area. Three hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. A survey research design was adopted for the study.

The population of the study was all the SS2 Chemistry students in the study area. Sample size of two hundred and fifty (250) students of SS2 were selected from five (5) schools using simple random sampling technique. The instrument for data collection was questionnaire tagged “Parental Background Questionnaire (PBQ)” and student’s raw scores. The data collected were analyzed using independent t-test.

Findings of the study revealed that parental background such as educational background, family size, and occupation of the parents have significant effect on student’s academic achievement. Based on the findings of the study, it was recommended among others that family planning should be encourage among couples in order to reduce the size of some families. 

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background to the Study

Education is the legacy a nation can give to her citizens especially the youths. This is because education is a basic tool used by society for transmission of its societal values, norms, and tradition from one generation to another. Every parent wants his or her child to do well in school. No parent is happy to see his or her child live contrary to the norms of the society.

Moula (2010) opined that the development of the nations starts from the family. When the parents 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 resources. The first social environment for the development of a child is the family. This means that parental background is one of the determinants of students’ academic achievement.

Parental background refers to all the conditions and circumstances in the family when influence the child physically, intellectually and emotionally (Moula, 2010). Parental background is a collective terminology comprising of parental educational level, occupation of the parents, income level of the parents, socio-economic status of the parents, material status of parent (Monogamous/Polygamous) and other factors pertaining to family life when is parental motivation.

Parental Background and Academic Achievement of Students in Secondary Schools in Chemistry

The importance of parental level of education to academic achievement of students cannot be over emphasized. Okwulanya (2013) opines that motivation from educated parents strength the academic aspiration and language development in their children to perform better in their academic work. According to this scholar, some children may come from homes where academic is much valued, where there are books around them and most of the time, they see their parents reading.

Their parents may give them books to read many books whether by organizing mini library for them at home or by encouraging them to use school library. The author went further to emphasize that some children may come from illiterate homes where no importance is attached to books. In such family, children scarcely see their parents with books.

Parental occupation is also an important parental background variable. The occupation of one’s parent may determine to a large extent one’s opportunity to attend secondary school or not, and it determine the type of school which an individual students attend. Moreover, Ugwjo (2010) noted that some parents prefer their children to also get into the same profession which they (parents) are operating. For instance parents who are doctors, lawyers, must clans, and lecturers.

Parental motivation is another parental background factor which influences the academic performance of students. Students under motivated condition exhibits purposeful behaviour aimed of these goals determine the motive. Research shows that supportive and attentive parenting practices positively affect academic performance of students (Eamon, 2015). In addition, high parental aspiration have been associated with increasing students’ interest in education.

Domina (2015) asserted parental motivation and involvement in schools has been linked to both positive and negative influences on academic achievement of students. It is thought that the type of involvement and motivation may make a difference, and that in some cases parent becomes involvement after their child has already had academic difficulties.

Another parental background that influences the academic achievement of students is the income. Francis (2017) opines that the low income parents may know the importance of education to the children, but due to the financial challenges, they cannot provide for the necessary school requirement of their children.

According to him, any parent that can scarcely provide for the basic needs of the family which include food, shelters, and clothing will hardly provide the academic excellence of their children to seek for job opportunities with the little education they acquired so as to support the family. The implication is that such parents are likely to give their children poor academic background that the researcher is interested in investigating the impact or parental background on academic achievement of secondary school students in Chemistry in Ibesikpo Asutan L.G.A.

1.2 Statement of the Problem

Chemistry is an important science subject of which its knowledge is applicable in almost all aspect of human existence. But the poor academic achievement of students in this important subject constitute a great source of worried to the parents, educational state holders and the teachers.

This poor academic achievement of students has been attributed to so many factors such as poor funding of educational programmes, poor teaching method of the teachers, indiscipline among the students, school location, and parental background of the students

Essien (2014) noted that many students go to school properly feed while others are not some do pay their fees on time, while some are sent away for not payment of fees, some have private teachers at home, while some are not. These all depends on the parental background of a child. Thus, it motivated the researcher to examine parental background and students’ academic achievement.

1.3 Purpose of the Study

The general purpose of this study is to examine parental background and academic achievement of students in secondary schools in Chemistry in Ibesikpo Asutan L.G.A.

Specially, the study aimed at:

1. Examine the influence of parental level of education on academic achievement of secondary school students in Chemistry.
2. Examine the influence of parental occupation on academic achievement of secondary school students in Chemistry.
3. Examine the influence of family size on academic achievement of secondary school students in chemistry.

1.4 Research Hypothesis

The following null hypotheses were formulated to guide study:

1. There is no significant difference between the academic achievement of students from high educated parents and those from low educated parents.
2. There is no significant difference between the academic achievement of students from high socio-economic parents and those from low socio-economic parents.
3. There is no significant difference between academic achievement of students from large family size and those from small family size.

Parental Background and Academic Achievement of Students in Secondary Schools in Chemistry

1.5 Significance of the Study

The findings of this study will be beneficial to the teachers, students, parents, school guidance counselors, and other researchers in the following ways: the teachers will be aware of students’ individual differences and structure their teaching methods to suit these students from different background.

The findings of this study will help students to realize that their poor academic achievement might not necessarily be their fault. Thus, they will be background and good use of the school library. The school guidance counselors will be in position to guide and counsel students based on their parental background. The findings of this study will also be a source of documentation to other resources.

1.6 Delimitation of the Study

This study is delimited to parental background and academic achievement of students in secondary schools in Chemistry in Ibesikpo Asutan L.G.A. The population for this study are all the SS2 Chemistry students in the study area. The sub-variable considered are: parental level of education, parental occupation and family size of the students.

1.7 Limitation of the Study

The following challenges were confronted by the researcher in conducting this research study.

1. Financial Constraint: High cost of transportation to visit the schools that were involved in this study constitutes some challenges to the researcher.
2. Time Constraint: Due to the fact that the researcher had other school activities to carry out as at the time of this study, the period of time given was not enough for this study to cover a wider range.
3. School Location: Some of the schools in the study area were located in the rural areas. So bad road network also posed some problems to the researcher.

Because of the above mentioned challenges the researcher was unable to cover all the schools in the area. Thus, to overcome these challenges, some of the schools were randomly selected.

Parental Background and Academic Achievement of Students in Secondary Schools in Chemistry

1.8 Definition of Terms

The following terms were defined for better understanding of the study:

1. Parental Background: This refers to all the conditions and circumstances in the family which influence the growth of a child academically.
2. Parental Education: This refers to the level of education which a child’s parent has attended.
3. Parental Occupation: This describes the type of job a Childs parent is doing.
4. Academic Achievement: This refers to the students’ graded obtained in an examination or test.
5. Family size: This refers to the numbers of individual in a family.