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CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Academic attainment is an important parameter in measuring success in students. Observations and reports have shown that success or high academic achievement has become a Herculean task to accomplish by students in recent times. Poor academic performance was recorded both at the secondary school and tertiary levels of education in Nigeria.

The performance of students at all levels in educational institutions in Nigeria has attracted much criticisms from all and sundry and from time immemorial. The decline in academic performance of students in Nigeria has been observed by Soyinka (1999), when he observed that education system in Nigeria need restructuring. He went further to say that academic standard had fallen drastically and the quality of graduates being produced by the nations’ schools is questionable and subject to re-examination.

Poor academic performance of students has been of great concern to educationists, guidance and counsellor in particular. Despite all guidance programmes and counselling strategies mounted in schools to improve the students’ academic performance were recorded yearly. It becomes necessary to find out the causes of such poor performance in Nigeria secondary institutions. Though these poor performances have been attributed to a lot of industries such as students’ factors, like student’s attitude to school, approach to learning and academic self concept. Apart from students’ factors, school factors and parent’s factors, there are other indicators that cause poor performance. on the part of the parents, there are certain factors which influence children’s success, such as parents’ social class, parents’ education as well as parental input and other factors, the family size and birth order may contribute positively or negatively to students’ academic performance.

Family size in this context refers to the total number of children in the child’s family in addition to the child himself, while the birth order refers to the child’s position in the birth order. However, family type that a child comes from either monogamous or polygamous family usually have impact on the child’s academic performance. It is important to note that either of the family type (monogamous or polygamous) family dictates the size of the family. Polygamous family is peculiar to Africa in general and Nigeria in particular in Oredo Local Government Area of Edo State, the data collected revealed that polygamous family is common among well educated family as well as among poorly educated families. It is equally among professional and managerial fathers of the top of the occupational hierarchy. It is the unskilled workers at the bottom of ladders that the practice of polygamy is prominent, but it is equally common among intellectually oriented families living in homes full of recent books as well as families without a single book in their houses.

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