Osasere Owens-Sogolo & Itohan Dawn Osunde
Abstract
This research work investigated the influence of home background on the academic performance of secondary school students in Oredo Local Government Area of Edo State. Descriptive survey methodology was employed for this investigation. The data was gathered using the results of the English Language Arts and Mathematics sections of the Academic Performance Test which was administered on a sample of 115 secondary school students out of which 55 students had parents who were separated, and 60 students had parents whose marriages had ended in breakup/divorce. The t-test statistics was used to test the hypothesis at 0.05 level of significance, and the mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research question. Findings indicated that secondary school students in the research region suffer a substantial decline in performance when their parents separated or brokeup. The results of this study led to the recommendation that students whose parents are no longer together should get counselling and other supporting services from counsellors, teachers and school administrators in order to help them concentrate on their schoolwork. Counselling should be made available to all students with the goal of improving their academic performance.