An investigation of parental social economic as a determinant of Academic performance in public primary schools in Kajiado Zone, Kajiado County

Abstract

A child’s education is closely linked to their life chances, income, and well-being. In this regard, the socio-economic status of a child is most commonly determined by combining parents’ educational level, occupational status, income levels, family size, and structure. From a tender age, a home shapes ones character, behavior, and ones perceptions. One’s home background will determine whether one grows up self-confident, hardworking and responsible, or angry and inadequate. The study aimed to investigate the effect of parental social economic status on academic performance of children in public primary schools in Kajiado zone. The researcher adopted descriptive design to collect information from the sample. The study population was all the public primary schools in Kajiado zone, in Kajiado County from which Purposive sampling was used to identify five schools for the study. The researcher used two sets of questionnaires to collect data from the parents and class teachers in the sampled area. Data collected underwent data cleaning and was coded using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 20.0. Pilot study was done to validate the data instrument. The findings of the pilot test showed that it was reliable. This study found out that the economic background of parents has a significant impact on the academic performance of pupils on school. The low performance among the rich can be attributed to the lack of incentive to work harder as opposed to the middle class who are usually brought up by ambitious parents who spend time with their children and encourage them to work harder to have a better future. The findings indicate a very strong correlation between family stability and academic performance of pupils. The low performance by widowed and divorced parents indicates that the disruption from the normal family set up affected the academic performance of pupils, a point proved by the consistent performance of pupils from single never married families. The study concluded that a disruption of the family environment, caused by either death or divorce has an adverse effect on the academic performance of learners in Kajiado County. The findings indicate a very strong correlation between family stability and academic performance of pupils. The low performance by widowed and divorced parents indicates that the disruption from the normal family set up affected the academic performance of pupils a point proved by the consistent performance of pupils from single never married families. The theoretical framework was parental involvement theory, which agrees with the findings of the study that parental socio-economic status influences the child performance. The study therefore recommends that a further research be conducted regarding the correlation between the marital status and academic performance among pupils to establish the validity of the findings of our study. The study recommends a further research be conducted to establish why pupils from poor or middle income families perform better than their mates from well up families.