CHAPTER ONE
1.0 INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY
It is an indisputable fact, that academic achievement of students, especially primary schools pupils is the function of relationship between home-school and the pupils’ school.
As potent agents of socialization, the school plays unquantifiable roles towards the achievement of primary schools pupils. As the matter of fact, the “school” come up as a result of term socialization. Hence, the process called socialization, clearly depends upon contact with other socialized human beings.
Therefore, socialization can be said to be depended on interaction (Adebayo, 2004). However, this process begins in the family and continues in peer-groups, in school, and on the job. If this process cut across the aforementioned, it can be explicitly stated here that formal instruction is but the top of the iceberg. This is thus acquire or learn in no place other than in the school as the agent of the process called socialization.
Moreover, children learn the value and norms of their society by observing the ways, adults behave, initiating them and testing the way people react to their actions. Much of this informal learning takes place through a kind of cultural osmosis. That is children will in a trained/informally manner be influenced by home via their parents. Therefore, if children can be influence on the way that view their immediate society by the action of both parents and school informally and formally respectively, it is don’t that they will have influence on their academic performance having viewed family as the biological cell of society and first learning environment for a child, parent as the child is first teachers and significant role models have the natural responsibilities to give in other to let he/she survive/excel academically. Communicating knowledge and skill to the child, giving financial and emotional support and encouragement, ensuring stability in the home relationship, open discussion, mutual decision making and the host of other are guidance roles of parents to their wards.
No child, biologically related or adopted, comes with an instructions manual. There are times when being a parent will come naturally to someone, then there are, the moments when the parental roles is playing out to a tough crowd. Adoptive parenting, while no more difficult or easy than raising a biological child, certainly presents unique obstacles that other parents at the PTA meetings may not be able to give insight into.
Each parent has a different idea of what good parenting involves. Some family dynamics function best with a stay-at-home spouse and others cannot survive without two incomes to make ends meet. Finding a natural rhythm for a family may see plenty of trial and error scenarios as there is not “right” or “wrong” way to handle a situation because only time can really indicate the means of a decision.
Personality, availability of social supports and family cohesion are often identified as categories of factors that can impact a child positively or negatively. Researchers defines Personality factors as internal characteristics found in every child, including the child’s intellectual ability and approach to learning, attitude and disposition, self-esteem, and impulse control. Social support availability factors are whether or not the child has advocates as home, at school, and elsewhere in the community. Family cohesion includes family structure and background characteristics such as the parents occupation, family income, parent education, parental mental illness, parenting style, race and ethnicity and family size. Family cohesion factors also include life events such as divorce, remarriage, death, and other changes that can influence child.
In today’s educational world, parents and families contribute as much as teachers, pupils and administrators to the educational process. May be even more. More than any other history, involving these community players represents a high priority of most school settings. The measured and researched positive effects of parents involvement on student academic achievement pushes this area into the focus of most school district and early childhood program goals. Along with the academic benefits of parent/ family involvement come the necessity to transition diverse families into sincere, effective relationships with their children’s teachers. The family structure of today bears little resemblance to the ones of pre- world war II, post- world war II, the ‘60’s, the ‘70’s etc. while in previous generations, many children grew up a two parent, husband – wife home, many of today’s children grow up in single parent homes, mixed (step) family homes, intergenerational (Grandparent) home and guardianship (aunt, uncle, cousin, sibling) homes.
Families have changed but children have not. They still need a home where they can feel safe, their basic needs of love, food, shelter, clothing are met as well as preparation to become future active participants in society.
Parents/ involvement represents many different constraints of time volunteering in the teachers’ class to fortifying the instruction at school with instruction at home to serving on highly influential policy committees with a public school district. An early childhood teacher must forthrightly hone his/her skills in promoting parenting knowledge, parenting skills, collaborating with parents in instructional discussions communicating between home/school, advocating for increased parent involvement.
Research has shown that pupils and family characteristics affect levels of parental involvement. Working – class families and families in which mothers work full time tend to be less involved in their children’s education. Also parents of elementary school pupils tend to be more involved in their children’s education than parents of older pupils. Other factors, however, have been shown to be more important predictors of parental involvement than family income or structure.
School play a significant role in getting parents and family members involved in pupils education. In their study published in the 1993 book families and school in a pluralistic society, Susan L. Dauber and Joyce L. Epstein found that school and teacher practices were the strongest predicators of parental involvement.
Specific practices that have been shown assigning home work designed to increase pupils parent interactions, holding workshops for families, and Communicating to parents about their children’s education.
Parental beliefs and perceptions have also been shown to be a strong predictor of parental involvement. Parent educational aspirations and level of comfort with the school and staff have been shown to predict level of involvement. In addition, parents belief about their responsibilities as a parent, their ability to affect their children’s education, and their involvement at home and at school.
Important obstacles that constrain parents ability to become actively involved in their children’s education include teachers attitude and family resources. These obstacles, however can be overcome by schools and through teacher training.
Each is discussed below.
Teachers attitudes may be one obstacles to parental involvement. For example, teachers belief about the impact of their efforts to involve parents in pupils learning predict their efforts to encourage family involvement.
Low levels of parental involvement at some schools may be the result of the staffs perceptions of parents or the degree to which they feel parental involvement is important for their pupils.
Although all families want their children to succeed in school, not all families have the same resources or opportunities to be involved in their children’s educations. Families in which all care givers work full – time, where there are multiple children, or where English is not spoken or read well face significant barriers to participation in their children education. It is important for schools to understand the demands that exist on the families of their pupils and to work to overcome them.
In her 1995 article Epstein argued that schools need to overcome those challenges by providing opportunities for school- to-home and home – to- school communication with families: providing communications to families in a language and at a reading level all families can understand: ensuring adequate representation of the entire community of parents on school advisory committees; and distributing information provided at workshop to the families who could not attend schools that work to meet these challenge and to make involvement easier and more convenient for all families will gain support from parents and improve pupils achievement.
One approach to overcoming these obstacles to parental involvement is to increase the degree to which teacher training covers the topic of parental involvement. Teacher – training programs spend very little time helping pupils understand the impact of parents in pupils learning and how teachers can help parent become involved in their children’s education without their training, teacher may not understand the importance of parental involvement or how to facilitate it. As a result, working with parents can become one of the greatest challenges faced by new teachers.
Choice has been the big policy idea in education for quite some time, and it is an idea that is increasingly being pushed hard in the UK. Choice may be a good thing in itself because people value their freedom; but most proponents argue that it leads educational providers to compete for pupils by improving their technology and raising educational standards.
Parents confirmed that current home-school relationships were limited school relationships were limited to parents’ meetings and routine communication with teachers. Many parents however emphasized that the nature of home school relationships depended upon the teachers approach and suggested that teacher approach should initiate more contact and increase the frequency of meetings. Many parents also appeared to be critical of other parents who were seen to create problems and not accept teachers’ view. This suggested that improvement of home school relationships would be challenging and could be challenging and could vary from a parent to parent.
Meanwhile, the roles of school through teacher cannot be over emphasized, this range from studying the children and their problems through observation and consultation with their procedures for imparting social skills and behavior among their things finally, for primary school pupils to attain academic achievement, the impact of home- school relationship must be duely observed taking cognizance of the aforementioned roles of parents and schools as the agent of socialization in the modern society.
1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEMS
This research work therefore aim at examining impact of home-school relationship on primary school pupils academic achievement.
1.3 RESEARCH QUESTIONS
In the course of this research work, the followings are the research question to be used:
1) Are there relationship between home and school of the primary school pupils toward their academic achievement?
2) Does financial, emotional support and encouragement of pupils?
3) Does parent educational background have effect on pupils academic achievement?
4) Are there relationship between home – school and parent style?
5) Does parent style have effect on academic achievement of primary school pupilsa?
1.4 PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
The family (parent in particular) is significant in the moulding of children, this work will buttress and search light on the significant relationship between home and school in pupils academic achievement.
It will among other thing highlight the roles of both home (parents) and school in the academic achievement of primary school pupils.
1.5 STATEMENT OF HYPOTHESIS
Working hypothesis needs to be formulated in order to guide the researcher to known the type of data to collect for the use of analysis.
These hypothesis will therefore, be tested using secondary data collected through the administered questionnaire.
1Ho: Relationship between home and school have no significant effect on academic achievement of primary school pupils?
1Hal: Relationship between home and school have significant effect on academic achievement of primary school pupils?
2Ho: Encourage, financial and emotional support have no significant effect on the primary school academic achievement.
2Hal: Encourage, financial and emotional support have significant effect on primary school pupils academic achievement?
3Ho: Prudent and effective way of communicating knowledge and skills have no significant effect on primary school pupils academic achievement.
3Hal: Prudent and effective way of communicating knowledge and skill have significant effect on primary school pupils academic achievement.
4Ho: Parent educational background have no significant effect on primary school pupils academic achievement.
4Hal: Parent educational background have significant effect on primary school pupils academic achievement.
1.6 SCOPE OF THE STUDY
The roles play by both parents and teachers via home and school cannot be over emphasized. There is constant and growing needs to therefore, develop and adjust the relationship between the home and the school in a significant way.
Meanwhile, academic achievement of primary school pupils should strongly determine by both teacher and parent. Therefore, there should be inestimable relationship between parent and teacher as a visible link on pupils academic achievement.
As a result of these roles and impacts, a member of parents and teachers are to be sampled by administering a number of questionnaires for the success of this work.
Hence, the scope of this work will be limited to number of homes and schools in Abeokuta south Local Government so as to have access to both parents and teachers respectively.