Socio-economic Status Of Parents And Students’ Academic Performances
[A CASE STUDY OF LAGELU LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA OYO STATE]

Students’ Academic Performance in Nigeria
In educational institutions, success is measured by academic performance or how well a student meet standard set out by government or the institution itself. Students who fail to meet the set standard are often said to have failed. Academic performance is the outcome of education – the extent to which a student, teacher or an institution has achieved their educational goals. It is often measured by examination or continuous assessment
The performances of the students in the West African Examination Council (WAEC) and National Examination Council (NECO) have been mass failure in recent times. The recurrence has remained a source to concern to parents, government and even the students. Performances of students in the two examinations have been fluctuating over the years and the problem has been attributed to so many challenges faced by the students which include distractions, social values; poor incentives for teachers, lack of good libraries and laboratories, and also death of qualified teachers.
    Others include students in ability to study and prepare for the exams, inability of teachers and parents to prepare the students adequately government’s failure to provide suitable environment for learning and lack of teaching and learning materials in our schools. A statistic from the NECO office indicates that during the November 2011 (NECO) exam, Oyo State had 6,579 cases of examination malpractice followed by Adamawa state with 36 cases. Also in 2012, a total of 21,274 cases of exams malpractices were recorded across the country with Kano State second with 238 cases.                         
    A total of 139,827 candidates that sat for the same examination in 2011 bagged five credits including Mathematics and English language, and 159,615 students or 37.97% of the total candidates that participated in the exam in 2012 got five credits including Mathematics and English language. Also, statistics for the 2011/2012, June/July NECO SSCE indicates that only 22% got at least credit in English and about 25% in Mathematics.
    For the 2015 WASSCE, Oyo State came 26th out of the 36 States. With 78,896 candidates that Oyo State presented, only 16,588 of them obtained five credits and above including English and Mathematics. The position of Oyo State in the last five years in WAEC is shown below:

With these poor performances of students in Oyo State, observation had been traced to different problems. The main aim of this study is to examine the effects of the socio-economic status of parent on the academic performance of students in selected secondary schools in Lagelu Local Government Area (L.G.A) of Oyo State as a case study.