CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION Background of the Study Various studies have been made which seek to establish how much a child’s educational achievements during his period at school are affected by factors outside the school. Great evidence is being sought by researcher to point out that attempt to provide equality of opportunities is affected because an individual’s life chances are to great extent determined at birth. However, no child can select his parentage nor can decide where he will like to live, the size of his family and its socio-economic status. All these things have a lot of influence on his life. Differences in family responsibility are responsible for a good deal of inequalities, which affects the society. Some people are born with noticeable disadvantages such as mental retardation or physical disability: but there is various numbers of social handicaps which can also place the individual at a serious disadvantage. To start with, poverty can greatly affect academic performance. It gives rise to inadequate and overcrowded housing conditions and attendant ills like chronic fatigue, malnutrition, physical deficiencies and inadequate social amenities that often occur among the children of low income families. These are all cause factors in academic performance and educational aspiration. Moreover, it must not be predict from this that all children from home which could be described as poor suffer a serious social handicap, because experience has shown that there is a class link between the size of the family and poverty. It is not believe that as families get larger, parents cannot give their children the same amount personal attention nor can they usually to provide them with many things which will help them to make the best possible use of their years at school. In fact, parents of large families cannot interact with their children as parents of small families and studies have clearly shown that educational achievement is closely linked with verbal ability. Thus the different ways in which language is used in the home affect the children’s ability to learn skills and cope with ideas. These greatly have influence on their learning and academic performance at school. For the middle and upper class families, high income enables their children the advantage that money can afford. Children from such families school is continuation and extension of learning and socialization process which will occur within the homes so that the home and the school compliment and support each other.A problem that may be absent in the educational and socializationprocess of children from lower class families. Thus or not, children attend school regularly perform well in academics and went for higher education after leaving school depends on the parental responsibility, socio-economic status of the family. Kerchoff (1972) asserts that social background of a person affects his attitudes towards things environmentalist is that the individual’s behaviour was shaped by how and in what circumstances that individual was raised. The supporters of this views chain that all persons were genetically equal and that later changes among them were as a result of different environmental opportunities. The role of the environment in the learning and development of the child cannot be overlooked. A child living in an environment of poverty deprived of basic needs such as food, enough rest, and the availability of adequate learning materials cannot perform as well like those that have things really available.The researcher therefore intends to investigate whether there is a relationship between parental responsibility and the academic performance of the students, also to what extent such relationship if any affects the academic performance of the student.

Statement of Problem Looking into the educational set up in academic performance of students, determined the many reasons, such as socio-economic and environmental condition. This study is focused at finding out the effect of family responsibility on the academic performance of students in University of Benin in Ovia North East Local Government Area. It is intended to find out how much the parental background affects the scores students makes. At school every individual is born with some potential which one could use to the level of development of his personality. Although students are taught by the same teacher, yet they may not attain the same measure of success. Some students make good scores while others make poor scores. One begins to wonder why there are remarkable differences between students’ performance at school that is why this study intends to find out the extent to which family responsibility affects the academic performance of the students contributes to these noticeable differences in students’ performance.

Research Questions Is there a difference in the educational achievement of students with different socio- economic background in University of Benin? Does the marital status of parents have influence on students’ academic performance? Do students from small size family perform better academically than those from large size family? Does the place of residence of the students affect his academic performance?

Purpose of the Study The aim for this study is to present a wide picture of the effects of parental responsibility on the academic performance of the students in University of Benin, in Ovia North East Local Government Area of Edo State, using some selected faculties in the university community as the case study of this research work. Moreover, it is the intention of the researcher to examine those factors that influence the academic performance of students and suggest means by which a fair balance could be maintain in order to help the students from various home backgrounds that is within the university to develop their educational abilities to best of their potentials. Scope of the Study This study is meant to cover the area of the University of Benin Ugbowo campus. The research is restricted to one of the many factors that affect the academic performance of students in Nigeria University, this being the effects of family responsibility on student academic performance. The study is meant to cover few faculties and population of the school, the researcher has selected five departments based on random sampling. The researcher chose the following departments because of the following reasons: The department comprises of both old and newly established departments. Among the five departments the sample was drawn.These departments were based on random sampling. The departments include: Department of Political Science and Public Administration. Department of Education and Political Science. Department of Animal Science. Department of International Studies and Diplomacy. Department of Accounting.

Significance of the Study Difference in academic performance has been related to a lot of factors, which are not unconnected with heredity and environment. Heredity has to do with genetic components of the individuals as transferred to him or her by his parents, while environment can be through the socio-cultural milieu within which an individual an individual lives. It is often assumed that a child’s life chances are determine by his parentage. This means that the educational career and opportunities, Medicare, values, expectations, and aspiration that a child has are due to the parental responsibilities he or she has. So it is therefore not surprising that people tend to believe that students from wealthy homes perform better in academic than students from poor homes. So this research work is significant in the sense that it hope to establish the relationship between parental responsibilities and academic performance, the result of this study will draw the interest of students, educators and parents to the problems of parental responsibilities. This will serve as a basis for solution and improvement. The study will also help teacher who may be importuned to read through the work to see the relationship between parental responsibilities and academic performance  and so be better equipped to identify cases of poor academic performance that are hereditary and those that due to poor parental responsibilities. Finally, it is hoped that the research finding will serve as literature and reading material to students, social scientists and educationalists.