FAMILY SIZE AND ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE OF PUPILS
FAMILY SIZE AND ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE OF PUPILS
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY
Academic
accomplishment is an essential parameter in measuring success in students.
Observations and reports have shown that success or high academic
accomplishment has become a Herculean task to accomplish by Pupils in recent
times. Poor academic performance was recorded at the primary, Primary school
and tertiary levels of education in Nigeria.
The
performance of Pupil sat 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 Pupils in Nigeria has been observed by
Soyinka (2009), 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 Pupils 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 primary institutions. Though this poor
performances have been attributed to a lot of industries such as pupils’
factors, like pupil’s attitude to school, approach to learning and academic
self concept. Apart from pupils’ 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 can contribute positively or
negatively to students’ academic performance.
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Family size in this context refers to the total number of children in the
child’s family in addition to the child him/herself, 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 has 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
Oruk Anam Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom 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.
Information from literature depicted that children from larger families are
found to do worse than children from smaller families lower down the birth
order do worse than those higher up the birth order (Lacovou, 2001). According
to Adler cited in Uba (2011) first birth or the older child is usually
advantaged by a good deal of attention and warmth during the early stage on age
of life, which he entertains all alone. Observations and studies have shown
that more attention and time are usually accorded the first born (Becker,
2000). Parental attention by parents decline as the number of children increase
and later born children perform less well than their earlier born siblings.
Studies carried out in the past on the relationship achievement and birth order
have shown that there were negative relationships. For example Leoma (2002) on
relationship of birth order and creativity, first born and configuration of
oldest and only children are significantly more creative or verbal test of
creativity than later born.
Nwafor and Ango (2008) observed that there was more significant outstanding
academic performance amongst first birth children. Tenibiaye (2002) observed
that there was a significant difference in intelligent capacity between the
first and later born Spear in his study, investigated that birth order effect
on intelligence with later born children revealed that later born children were
less capable than earlier siblings when birth order controlled, family size was
found to be negatively related to intelligence.
However, Powell and Steelman (2003) and Vanejik and Degraaf (2005) argued that
children’s attainment depends on input of time and money from their parents.
The more increase of children in a family the less of both inputs. These inputs
are not money alone, but other essential things like time, attention, resource
delusion and so on.
Moreso,
Booth and Kee (2006) confirmed that children from larger families have lower
levels of education. Research on the effect of siblings, size and position has
been based on a theory of the allocation of parental resources as presented in
Becker (2000) and Spanta and Paulson (2005) confirmed that differences were
found in birth order and family size of adolescent achievement in academic.
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1.2 STATEMENT OF PROBLEM
Today
teachers are often blamed for low academic performance of the students, without
actually finding out other related factors that can contribute to the students’
problem as far as academic is concerned most people are quick in pointing
accusing fingers on both the child and the teachers, should the whole problem
be heaped on the teachers who always want the best from their students? One
would like to find out the justification the people have for blaming the
teachers as regard the low performance of the Pupils in their academic. The
truth is that the foundation of the child socialization is laid at home more so
children spend more time at home than in school. Many factors associated with
the family could have contributed to the high or low performance of the Pupils
with the family size as one of them. The family size in one way or the other
contribute to the failure or success of a student in school, in the sense that
when the family is large, there will be no adequate concentration on the child
by their parents based on the academic performance of the child.
This
study therefore considered the influence of Family Size and Academic
Performance of primary school pupils in English Language in Oruk Anam Local
Government Area.
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