Abstract

This study examined family factors as correlates of academic performance of high achieving secondary school students in Oyo State, Nigeria. The study adopted the “ex-post facto” research design. Systematic random sampling technique was used to select six schools from all the secondary schools in Oyo State. From the six schools, those with 70 percentile upward were selected as high achievers. From these high achieving students, twenty were randomly picked from each school using hat method. This led to the selection of one hundred and twenty (120) high achieving senior secondary school two (SS II) students altogether. Instruments utilised are: Home Environment Inventory (r=0.85), Parent Style Inventory (r=0.74) and Family Structure Questionnaire (r=0.73). Data collected were analysed using t-test, Standard Deviation and Intercorrelation Matrix to determine the relationship between the dependent and independent variable. Results showed that significant difference exists between academic performance of students from intact and broken family (t=4.37, df=118, t-crit = 1.98). The result also revealed that positive and significant relationship exist between each of the predictor variables and the outcome variable (academic performance) that is, parental socio-economic status and academic performance (r=0.71), parenting styles and academic performance (r=0.49) as well as family structure and academic performance (r=0.42) in that order. Positive and significant relationship is also noted among the predicting variables, that is, parental socioeconomic status and family structure (r=0.63), parental socio-economic status and parenting styles (r=0.56) and family structure and parenting styles (r=0.51) respectively. It is recommended that clergy men like Pastors and Imams must always preach against separation and divorce in their churches and mosques while parents must be encouraged to embrace permissive parenting style which has been found to be highly productive in this study.