Slavin, (1998) opined that children from poverty start out in life at a disadvantage. Their mothers may have no or inadequate pre-natal care. They may have insufficient early health care. If the parents are fortunate to have jobs, affordable day care may be of poor quality. He also noted that poor children do not have the same kind of experiences that children of other social classes do. The experiences they miss out on are those that could help in the development of skills and academic achievement. Some examples would be the use of home computers; visits to zoos and museums; attendance at pre-school programs; availability of literature and educational reading materials; interaction with educated, literate and well-spoken adults etc.
Huitt, (1999); Pajares, (1996), fittingly pointed out that students with low socioeconomic status may be depressed, have a fear of failure due to past experiences or have acquired failure expectations from their parents. They may be truly capable children who, as a result of previous demoralizing experiences or self-imposed mind-sets, have come to believe that they cannot learn. If they doubt their academic ability, chances are that they will envision low grades before they complete an assignment or take a test. This has an effect on goal setting in that these individuals also tend to set lower goals for themselves. They may have no real personal goals or vision, but only fantasies of what they hope for. If they do have goals, these children need to learn how they can achieve the goals and develop awareness of the possible self.
Student self-beliefs have great influence on whether they fail or succeed in school. We need to provide intellectual challenge and create classroom climates of emotional support and encouragement to help students meet the challenges. We need to nurture the self-beliefs of our students and provide them with successful models that transmit knowledge, skills and inspiration. Improving self-efficacy can lead to increased use of cognitive strategies and, in turn, higher achievement.
Bowman, (1994); Guerra and Schutz, (2001) proffered that the social environment that is present in conditions of poverty affects the development of children living in that environment by limiting the ways they learn to live in social groups. Opportunities for intellectual development, such as the development of cognitive skills and thinking patterns, are the result of social interaction. Children who live in poverty conditions are unable to develop mutually satisfying social relationships. Language is an important tool in the process of learning to think. If children have limited opportunity to learn language, organize perceptions, and develop other higher order cognitive processes, their ability to solve problems and think independently is negatively affected.
Kaiser and Delaney, (1996) also remarked that conditions required for families to be successful are often lacking in the environment of poverty; for instance, stability, security, emotionally positive time together, access to basic resources, and a strong shared belief system. Thus, family relationships suffer when individuals live in poverty. Parents exhibit less capacity to be supportive and consistent in their parenting, provide less vocal and emotional stimulation, are less responsive to their children’s needs and model less sophisticated language. Parenting style here is more punitive and coercive and less consistent. Hence, parental support and involvement in school activities is lower among poor parents. According to him, this does not necessarily indicate a lack of interest among these parents, but it reflects issues related to poverty.
According to Ekstrom et al, (1986), an adolescent from a family of lower socioeconomic status is more likely to exit from high school before finishing and less likely to attend college. Poverty can affect educational outcomes in a variety of ways. Adolescents from poor families are more likely to lack basic academic skills and to have repeated a grade as children; they are at risk for poorer health and nutrition, a factor that could affect their ability to concentrate in the classroom. The stress and lack of social support to parents in poor families may adversely affect parents' support for school success, and thus, children's intellectual development. Furthermore, he noted that poor families are likely to live in poor school districts with fewer resources to offer their students.
Slavin, (1998) once again submitted that the quality of a child’s earliest experiences has great influence on future development and potential to succeed. Intervention should be implemented at an early stage to stop the process of failure before it begins. According to him, early childhood education programs can help overcome the disadvantages that come with being poor and ensure that they enter school ready to learn by providing emotional nurturing and intellectual challenge. These programs foster the development of language abilities and cognitive skills. They provide children with experiences that will serve as a foundation of knowledge for future learning. They also provide children with the opportunity to observe pro-social behavior and develop positive relationships with adults and peers.
Corroborating the above fact, Shittu (2004) stated that poor parental care with gross deprivation of social and economic needs of a child usually yield poor academic performance of the child. On the other hand, where a child suffers parental and material deprivation and care due to divorce or death, or absconding of one of the parents, the child's schooling may be affected as the mother or father alone may not be financially buoyant to pay school fee, purchase books and uniforms, such child may play truant, thus his performances in school may be adversely affected. Conversely, good parenting supported by strong economic home background could enhance strong academic performance of the child. This further predicts academic performance where the child is properly counseled in the choice of his/her courses and vocation that matches his mental ability, interest and capability. Ipaye (1996) in the same vein reiterated the effects of poverty of the parents on the Nigerian child. According to him, poverty syndrome imposed by economic crunch, maladministration, corruption and emergency closure of firms has imposed hardship among parents/workers. They in turn have not been able to provide adequately for the basic functional, social and academic needs of the students. Many students have thus abandoned school to engage in commercial sex or child labour to make ends meet, to support self and others. By this, they spend much time on these acts than schooling; this has terrible effects on their academic performance, in their schoolwork and
public examination.
