Influence Of Family Background On Academic Performance Of Secondary School Students
[A CASE STUDY OF ILORIN SOUTH LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA KWARA STATE, NIGERIA]

Socio-economic status and academic performance of students
    Human beings are not equal in any society. Some are rich while other is poor. These condition affect or influence the educational attainment of individual citizens, Oyelade and Adebayo (2000), from the immemorial, societies have been divided between masters and servants, aristocrats and commoners. According to Berokon and Stationer (2002) people in the society are ranked into higher and lower society is ranked into higher and lower society positions so as to produced hierarchy of respect.
    Moreover, in a community where the government cannot filly shoulder financial obligation of the education of her citizens, there is bound to be discrepancy between educational achievement of the children from rich and middle and that of poor families. Boocook (2003), cited in Akintunde (2004), said that the most important predictor of achievement in school associated with the family is socio-economic status. As such difference in family backgrounds effect what a student learns in the schools, the nature of school attended the quality of achievement recorded by him.
    Halsey et al (2004), contended that student whose parent have attained high socio-economic stats levels tend to show a high level of educational performance and students with low socio-economic family background attain a low level of educational performance. This is reason why we see parent who constantly drive their children to school in car, one can also think of a situation where a child is constantly driven out from the school because he has not paid his school fees. Section (2003), has also shown that children from poor families are handicapped directly by higher rate of sickness and poor rate of school attendance. He stated that poverty may have an inhibiting affects on ambition.
    Olatunde et al (2005), highlights that class position reinforces the advantages and disadvantages than we have at birth. If we are well fed we are likely to be healthy and consequently to develop more rapidly than children from poor families. Since our diet can affect our learning ability and our life span. Harlock (2006), is of the opinion that the level of socio-economic status the child belongs, affect his social acceptance, she stressed that students of low socio-economic status have poor socio acceptance while those with high economic status have high social acceptance.
    Branthinger (2006) observed that low-income parents were found to be aware of the class and character of local school and believed that high income schools were of superior quality.
    In the late 80s, there was the establishment of technical and teachers colleges. The financing of member of the community (i.e. students from low socio-economic status) suffer intellectually, was summoned up by Russell (1981) when he wrote, I think many clever young men become rapid and cynical through the consciousness that their work has no real importance while they are at the university.
Family size and academic performance of students
    Musgrave (2001) summarized his idea on the effects of family size on performance thus: in general, the small size families produced the most intelligent test, presumably because intelligence is to a considerable extent inherited and intelligent parents shows their intelligence by limiting the size of their families (pg. 72). E is of the opinion that in a small family, the child will be in closer touch with his parents. He receives more affection from them and gain more ideas than the would if he had been in cloud of siblings. Zajonic (2002) asserted that when a father chronically absent from the family, there would necessarily be a decrease in the quality of the intellectual environment since one member of high mental age has been removed from the family configuration. According to Jerricks et al (2003), The “Good Home” is an aid to success in our school system when it is small the parents are ambitions for their children.
    The author opines that the feature of a good home is not in doubt in its size when it is very small, it enables the parents to plan and desire great for their children education in these school was free i.e. in terms of feeding, tuition fees and textbook with the introduction of the universal primary education poverty stopped being obstacles to the furtherance of children’s education. G.H. Johnson (2003) conducted a research and wrote a thesis in which they concluded that small families produce the most intelligent children as measured by intelligent test, similarly, they opined that the children who is in close with is parents and are habitually uses more grown up languages and ideas that his counterparts that were test in cloud of siblings, however, Douglas (2004), found out that middle class children are likely to succeed if they come from large families.
    Douglas (2002), also found out that middle class boys are likely to perform better in schools if they come from large families. But Sampson (2003) identified that many working class families contain many children and they perform fairly than when the families are small. However, in the middle class, it was only families of four or more children that had a depressing effect, among working class children the prospects became progressively worse as the family increased in size.
    Martinson and Wu (2004), opined that deviation from the nuclear family to polygamous family types a one parent missing role models and thus leading to low educational attainment.