Relative Effects of Parents’ Occupation, Qualification and Academic Motivation of Wards on Students’ Achievement in Senior Secondary School Mathematics in Ogun State

Abstract

The importance of mathematics to an individual and the society is clearly beyond debate thus, every individual needs some knowledge of mathematics in order to live a useful life and be an effective member of the society. Despite this impo9rtance role accorded mathematics in the school curriculum, many academically capable students prematurely restrict their educational and career options by discontinuing their mathematical learning early in the high school. The poor results in this subject have continued to be stumbling-blocks in the realization of the educational and employment desire of many candidates because it is a gatekeeper for many careers. This study investigated the relative effects of parents’ occupation, education and academic motivation of wards on students’ achievements in senior secondary school Mathematics in Ogun State, Nigeria. The study employed ex-post facto type of research and the sample was selected using the multistage sampling technique. Two thousand four hundred students from 60 selected schools in nine local government areas within Ogun State, Nigeria were involved and two research instruments namely; Students’ Questionnaire; (r = 0.81) and Mathematics Achievement Test; (r = 0.84) were used. Data were analyzed using multiple regression at .05 level of significance. The result reveals that parents’ education has the highest significant influence on the academic achievement of students in Mathematics while the effect of academic motivation had the least effect among the variables which exerted significant effects on students’ academic achievement in Mathematics.

Keywords: Parents’ education; Occupation; Academic Motivation; Achievement.