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THE EFFECT OF SOCIO-ECONOMIC STATUS OF PARENTS ON THE ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE OF SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS IN NIGERIA

CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF 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 desires 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 teachers, improved technology and facilities for teaching and learning, educational system in Nigeria is still losing it values.
Motivation for this study is based on the fact that some students are exceptionally good in their work, while some extremely bad. When such variations in scores are traced it is more often discovered that family background is a major contributory factor. It is therefore important that the levels of such contributions and the influence they have on children be examined so that useful suggestions to parents, teachers, educational planners and government could be made.
Orhungur (1990) asserts that the cultural background of the family is determined to a large extent by its socio-economic background. As the child grows up moves out to the interest wider society his/her interaction with it and perception of it are largely determined from her earlier, experiences at home. The family setting and its socializing influence mould the personality of the child. Nigeria, for instance is a society with diverse ethnic groups with various cultural background in areas like family size, occupation and in extreme cases, religion. These factors pose their own restrictions on educational upbringing of children. The social sitting or mode of settlement of the family and extended family system may equally influence the academic performance of a child and by extension, their educational upbringing.
Motivation is most need in order to perform more efficiently in their area of endeavor. When certain factors are eminent in a child's family background, it is clear that the child will be motivated and driven towards high academic goal.
Denga (1986) in Eyake (1997) advised that praises, incentives, recommendations and other forms of reward system should be employed as motivational factors to stimulate students to higher achievements. 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 parents 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 advantage over a child whose parents 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, the home, parental social orientation, educational level, occupation to mention but a few. It is therefore, evident that students performance is contingent on the stimulus the home offers.
Educational upbringing is not unconnected with the family influence of a child. Individual members of the family serve as a model to the child as he/ she copies from each of them. Eyake (1997) quoted. Adeyeme (1977) if the house fails to provide the child with the necessary equipments 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 problems.
The agrarian and large families have accounted for the polygamous life of people. The large the size of the family, the more economic and other social responsibilities the parents bring upon themselves. And more often than not, the educational performance of students from such family suffer serious setback. This is because such parents might not be able to afford the cost funding education for the children. 
Other factors may affect the education performance of students like separation on grounds of different working station, divorce or even natural death can bring adverse effect on the growth and development of a child.
Furthermore, economic position of parents is one of major factors that can influence greatly the educational upbringing of a child. In most families, either or none of parents may be earning income sufficient enough to sustain the family, faced with malnutrition and other emotional and psychological effects, the mental development of the child  would be greatly retarded. Orhunger (1990) adds that a low income family with plenty of feeding problems may produce children who physical and mental development poses real challenges to the schools effort at optimum development of the child.

1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
The gap in performance between students and academic excellence constitute a great source of worry and serious concern as well as discomfiture to both parents, schools mangers, policy makers and various governments responsible for the education of students in secondary school schools.
Experience has shown that among the secondary school studentsthere exist some differences which influence students academic performance, such as some studentsbeing able to pay their school fees promptly, while  others  were often sent away for nonpayment 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 text books and exercise books, others were not, where as some studentscome to school properly feed, others not. One then wonders whether influence of family background had played a in these issues.
In the light of this, the main problem of this search is to find out if there exist in Lagos metropolis a relationship between socio-economic status of parents and students academic performance.

1.3 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
The main objective of the study is to examine the influence of socio-economic status on academic performance of students in lagos Metropolis. Specific objectives of the study include:

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