HOME ENVIRONMENT AND IT'S EFFECT ON ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE AMONG SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS

Introduction

1.1 Background of the Study

The academic performance of any student cannot be separated from the home environment in which the child lives, healthy home environment offers emotional security to a child. Education has one of its basic task as to train young people to become useful members of the society. This training begins at home in the informal way. The home of the child is the first place he enters as he is born into the world by his or her parents.

Children are motivated to work on activities and learn new information and skills when their environments are rich in interesting activities that arouse their curiosity and offer moderate challenges. The same can be said about home environment , unfortunately there is much variability in motivational influences in homes, some homes have many activities that stimulate children thinking as well as computer, books, puzzles and parents who may be heavily interested in their children cognitive development and spent time with them on learning. Much of the variability in the relation between family income and children’s intellectual development comes from the family provision of a stimulating home environment (Young, Linver & Brooks, 2002).

Children intellectual development is most strongly influenced by the home environment during infancy and early childhood. When they are under the direct influence of parents. As children mature, schools and peers also begin to play a role in their intellectual socialization. There is much evidence supporting the hypothesis that the quality of a child’s early learning in the home environment relate positively to the development of intelligent and reading skills, (Meece, 2002, Sene Chai & Lefevre 2002), and parental involvement in schooling also predict achievement (Luckner, Whaley & Egeland, 2004).

Various homes factors have been shown to be important, mother’s responsiveness, discipline style and involvement with the child, organization of the environment, availability appropriate of learning materials, opportunities for daily stimulation. Parents, who provide a warm, responsive and supporting environment, encourage exploration, stimulate curiosity and provide play and learning materials accelerate their children’s intellectual development (Meece, 2006). Which on the long run increases academic performance?

Within the home environment we must examine both the roles of mothers and fathers because differentiate parent behaviour has often been implicated as a variable affecting children’s development. Some of the potential parental behaviour that can influence children motivational beliefs are:

1. Attributions for the child’s school performance
2. Perception of the task difficulty of school work
3. Value for school work
4. Expectation and confidence in children’s abilities

The home environment provide the foundation for learning and is an element of the student life that can affect grades. Providing opportunities to learn outside the school help facilitate student success in the school environment, as reported by the university of Minnesota extension. According to experts the mother’s educational level had the single most important impact on a young child’s academic performance.

The school cannot single handedly provide the continuation of the home environment, but the can play estimate role in laying foundation of the child in learning how to read and write however, this influence is characterized by various factors such as the parents educational attainment and cultural issues. Over the years the society recorded a persisted increase in the poor performance in the various school examination such as the senior school exam (S.S.C.E) comments from educator have shown that the blame for poor performance has been as a result of neglect and care free attitude toward academic work by students and parents.

It is against this background that researcher has decided to investigate academic performance on child. There are innumerable factors that affect the child academic performance as stated above. It is obvious that a child academic performance is directly related to his or her environment as well as learning facilities and socio cultural issues. Every child is born with certain level of intellectual ability and capability but a good conducive environment with adequate learning facility will help boost intellectual and academic capability of the child. Parent from good learned environment will; always have good attitude toward education any provide learning materials such as the television, instructive videos, books and toys (creative toys) etc that facilitate the learning process if they are provided.

Educated parents will always believe that it is important to help a child with his or her home work and revise the school work that the child had done but this is the opposite if a child is from a poor home environment to a large extent he or she is deprived of the opportunities and he or she struggle with the teaching and learning process.

1.2 Statement of Problem

Good education does not happen by chance. It is a product of effective teaching and learning coupled with the effort of the teacher, the school, the students, parents and their various home environments. Often at times the blames on the poor performance of students in school are shifted to the teachers and the school authorities.

Most families in our society seem not to give adequate attention to the education of their children. It appears some of the parents have erroneous notion about the performance of their children, they do not know and seem to fulfill their role of guidance and encouragement in the child’s performance in schools. Some people also have the notion that the mass failure or success in schools could be traced back to the teachers and the school authorities. While other people see socio-economic status of the family as an influence to the child’s academic performance.

However, some research works have revealed that the performance of the students is a joint effort of both the school authorities and that of the parents in different home environment.

This calls for further research to find out the causes of the poor performance of the students and then proffer solution to that. In Edo state for instance, some students and parents have the notion that the factors responsible for the re-occurrence massive failure of student in junior and senior West African School Certificate Examinations (WASCE) is the factor emanating from the school authorities and the teachers alone. Some students even go to special Centre’s while few enlightened parents maintained that there are some factors in student’s home environment which also contribute to that. It is on this premise that this study was set out to identify some of the home environmental factor affecting the students’ academic performances and proffer solution to that.

1.3 Research Questions

As regard to the purpose of research the blowing research question provide the forms or the study:

1. To what extent does parental involvement influence the secondary school students academic performance?
2. To what extent does parent’s occupation affect the secondary school students academic performance?
3. Does the type of family structure and family situations influence the secondary school students’ academic performance?
4. To what extent does parental educational status influences secondary school students academic performance?

1.4 Purpose of The Study

The purpose of this study is to examine the Home Environment And Its Effect On Academic Performance Among Secondary School Students of Egor local government.

1.5 Significant of the Study

This study will help contribute to the existing knowledge already on ground concerning the home environment and academic achievement in secondary school student of egor local government area. The findings of the investigation will help the various authorities as teachers, parents and caregivers in adopting method or technique in child rearing as well as teaching so as to bridge the gap of variation in academic Performance and how to organize students in such a way that they are all carried along academically no mater his or her family condition.

1.6 Delimitation / Scope of The Study

The study was design specifically to investigate the relationship between school environment ant and the academic achievement among secondary school students in Egor local government area Edo state. It is restricted to only ten secondary school within this community.

1.7 Definition of Terms

Academic Achievement:

Refers to the level of schooling must successfully complete. Another ability to attain success in studies. (four dictionary, 2013) for example when you receive great grades, this is an example of academic achievement, where you after college and graduate school, with a good result. It should also be the extent to which a student teacher or institution has achieves their educational goal.

Curriculum:

Curriculum is the total Aggregate of subject or construct, course of study organized and planning by an institution like a school that is disseminated to the students within a certain time phase in a usually formal setting

Family:

Collins students dictionary defines family as a social groups consisting of parents and their children it may be broader than this in some cases and yet may also be more limited to a single parent and a child/children.

Literacy:

Traditionally literacy has been defined as the ability to read and write. However in the past twenty years or so, this conventional definition of literacy has been challenged and broadened to include a wide range of complex and multiple dimensional processes and skills.

Family Literature:

The term family literacy was coin by Taylor (2003) in her study of the ways in which the parents impact assist the literacy of their children. This concept of family literacy should be distinguished from family literacy programs (e.g.Hannon and Bird, 2004;Was and Hermann,2004)

Family Structure:

The composition and membership of the family and the organization and patterning of relationships among individual family members.