Theoretical Framework

Poor academic performance in national examinations have been

attributed to many factors that are mainly family based such as
those that are faced with changing hard economic times which has
made it not possible for them to meet their responsibilities of
ensuring a healthy and literate family. The size of the family in
which the child grows especially if the family does not have
adequate resources will affect the child growth and development
due to lack of quality feeding, lack of proper medical care, and
more so a child will not be given the required attention on
his/her academic work which can make him/her lose focus. The
issue of homework, payment of school fees, providing security is
all within the confines of the family to provide to the children.
Family financial resources, which are associated with parent’s
education attainment and occupation, often imply increased
learning opportunities both at home and at school. In general,
the socio-economic background of the family impacts negatively on
the academic performance of the child.

According to Okumu et al (2008), education is a fundamental

human right for economic growth and human development. Education
is therefore necessary for all societies to thrive in all aspects
of growth. Education is valuable because it contributes to
national development through provision of appropriate resource
personnel that aids in stimulating productivity as well as
eliminating poverty, hunger disease and ignorance (Republic of
Kenya 2005). A lot more study done by Kapunga (1992) shows that
education liberates society from socio-political forces that
affect and influence his personality at global level.

Mbelle and Katabalo (2003), asserts that secondary education

aims at meeting global challenges in science and technology not
leaving behind organization of production processes and markets.
Other scholars such as Schultz (2002) emphasize that investing in
education leads to faster growth for developed and new
industrialized countries. This explains why most of the
developing world especially the sub-Saharan Africa is heavily
investing in education from primary, secondary and tertiary
levels by increasing enrolment and improving the quality of
education. For Uganda’s case government has encouraged education
for all in primary and lower secondary levels. Research by
Miller-Grandvaur and Yoder (2002) on secondary school education
forms a vital part of education interventions in sub-Saharan
Africa. However the main challenge of secondary school education
seems to be poor academic performance that cuts across the
developing world.

A lot of studies show that there is a big effect of the

nature of family background on the academic performance of
children in school. The family back ground plays has a big on the
academic performance of children at all levels of education in
the school system. It is generally accepted that the quality of
family interactions has important associations with the
children’s academic motivation and achievement. For instance Ryan
(2000) shows that there is a significant effect of family
background variables, parent support and teacher support on a
child’s educational attainment. According to (Morgan et al,
2009), stresses that children from low socio economic status
households and communities develop academic skills more slowly
compared to their counterparts from higher socio-economic status
families. The low socio economic status (economic struggling
families) deprives children of what is necessary to support their
growth and welfare. Initial academic skills are correlated with
home environment where low literacy involvement and chronic
stress negatively affect a child’s academic performance. Parents
from low socio economic background are less likely to have the
financial resources or time availability to provide children with
academic support.

An American, Kean, (2005) suggested that more highly

educated parents actively encourage their children to develop
higher expectations of their own. He further pointed out that
students perform better in school if their parents as well as
mothers are actively involved in their education. The home
environment provides environment for learning and is an element
of the basics for students’ life that can affect academic
performance. Providing opportunities to learn outside the school
helps to facilitate student’s success in the school environment
as reported by the University of Minnesota extension.

Globally, Hargreaves (2002), reported that in Germany

students with parents who are involved in their school tend to
have fewer problems, and better academic performance and are more
likely to complete high school than students who are not involved
in their school. Good grades require positive effects of parental
involvement that have to be demonstrated at both elementary and
secondary levels across several studies with the largest effect
often occurring at elementary level where numeracy, literacy as
well as values of human development are very essential. Atieno
(2012) emphasizes that the quest for provision of quality
education continues to a matter that continues to be cherished by
both consumers and providers of education in Kenya and the entire
developing world.

Parents’ education and family interaction pattern during

childhood also might be linked more directly to the children’s
developing academic success and achievements that includes among
others oriented attitudes, general social learning and cognitive
framework (Bandura 1996). Bandura stated that behavior is shaped
in part through observational and direct learning experiences.
Learning takes a course of interactive actions and reactions
which implies that it is learning by copying from parents and
that everything children do is by and through socialization.

It is important to note that education process and success

is positively impacted by favorable home learning opportunities
such as parents encouraging that their children have the right
feeding, have security, and are happy and calm. They further
reported that creating a positive physical and mental atmosphere
in the home helps to prepare students to be ready and able to
learn. A parent child relationship characterized by nurturing,
acceptance and encouragement as well as parents’ responsiveness
to the child needs correlates with positive academic performance.
However according to the University of Minnesota extension
parental overprotectiveness, authoritarianism, disapproval and
punishment often have a negative relationship with students’
academic performance. The relationship family socio-economic
status and the academic performance has been well established in
sociological research.

Regionally, according to (2014), report by a task force on

improving the performance of public secondary schools
commissioned by the Kenya governor in Nairobi Evans Kidero, the
transition rate from primary to secondary schools in the city was
at all the time low. Only 50% of pupils complete secondary
schools due to lack of school fees or insufficient facilities.

Kevin Marjori banks and Mboya (2000) used such combination

of family structures to examine differences in the academic goal
orientation of African students in South Africa. The findings
indicated that while measures of refined family influences are
related to goal orientations, there continue to be unmediated
differences for students from social status background and from
urban rural location in an examination of differences in the
academic performance.
 In East Africa the demand for secondary education has been
increasing over time due to increase in enrolment of pupils in
primary schools. It has resulted into overcrowding of classrooms
and general lack of scholastic materials that has necessitated
the involvement of parents to cater for the learning of their
children.

In Uganda’s case, Nalukwago (1995), identified the influence

of parents’ attitude, social economic background, cultural
attitudes which affect the performance of students in Uganda. She
pointed out the role of parents like catering for children’s
school needs like textbooks, exercise books, uniforms and paying
fees that are vital towards their children’s academic
performance. In the early years parents are their children’s
first teachers exploring nature, reading together, cooking
together, and counting together. When young children begin formal
schooling the parent’s job is to show how the school can be
extended.

It is widely believed that the home has a great influence on

students’ psychological, emotional, social and economic state. In
the view of (Ajira et al, 2007), the state of the home affects
the individual since the parents are the first socializing agents
in an individual’s life. This is because the family background
and the context of the child affect her reaction to life
situations and his level of performance. Uwaifo (2008) asserts
that parents and the individuals experience at home play a
tremendous role in making the child what he or she is.

Involvement of the parents will make students achieve more,

exhibit more positive attitudes and behavior and feel more
comfortable in the environment. Parents being the first teachers
and the caretakers of the home, the home environment shapes the
child’s initial views of learning, parents’ beliefs, expectations
and attitudes about education affect their children’s conception
of the place of education in their values.

The United Nations Report (2010) highlighted education as a

basic right and need which is significant in the accomplishment
of the second goal of the Millennium Development Goals. This is
because good education academic performance guarantees skilled
and dynamic citizens. In addition, one of the aspects of the
social pillar of Kenya Vision 2030 is education. Kenya Vision
2030 points out education and training as the media that will
take Kenya to be a middle-income economy.
 Family backgrounds have been of great important in shaping
the performance of children in schools worldwide. This is
because; academic performance is usually as a result of
motivation that children get from the people they interact with
in their initial stages of life. A study conducted in the U.S.A
by Rouse and Barrow (2006) revealed that years of schooling
completed and educational achievement of students, varied widely
by family backgrounds. Rouse and Barrow (2006) found out that
students who came from less disadvantaged families had higher
average test scores and were more likely to have never been held
back a grade as compared to students from the more disadvantaged
families. However they highlighted that it was not clear to
reflect the causal effect of family backgrounds on the child’s
educational achievement which creates a gap that this study
sought to fill by finding out the influence of family backgrounds
on the students’ academic performance.

Further McIntosh (2008) in his study concluded that in

Canada, children who came from low income households, having
divorced or separated parents, would actually perform better than
average scores if they came from homes that had positive
attitudes and that strongly supported their children. This was
supported by another study on Children and Youth in Canada that
was carried out by Ryan (2000) who reported that there was a
significant effect of family background variables, parental
support, and teacher support on a child’s educational
achievement.

The relationship between parental resources on the academic

performance of children has received a great deal of attention in
the economic literature in African Countries. For instance, Guo
and Harris (2000) observed that in Ghana and South Africa states,
students' performance in school was strongly associated with
their parents' educational attainments. The strong correlation
between parental income and student's scholarly achievements is
one of the major findings in the literature on the determinants
of children's attainments. However, the fact that children of
parents with high levels of schooling or income perform better
than those from less advantageous family backgrounds does not
necessarily imply that the former exert relatively more effort.
Consequently, the significance of education attainments and
academic performance are related in most African countries. This
is because, how well an individual performs in primary and
secondary school largely determines the individual’s final post-
secondary educational destination (Charles, 2003).
 In East Africa for instance, parents try to influence the
activities that relate to their children’s schooling performance,
make investments of time and money in their children, and serve
as their role models and set objectives and priorities for them
to follow (Venkatesh, 1999). In Kenyan situation, financial
constrains, education level of the parent and the marital status
of the parents are the key determinant of student motivation to
study. For instance, a study by Pamela and Kean (2010) stated
that those students whose parents had a tertiary level of
education performed, significantly better in tests of science,
reading and mathematical ability than do those whose parents had
only basic schooling. Thus, across these three disciplines, the
average grades achieved by students with well-educated parents
ranged from 7% higher than those achieved by students with poorly
educated parents in developing countries to 45% higher in most
developed countries. This therefore, shows that parents’
education has some influences on the students’ beliefs and
behaviors, leading to positive outcomes for children and youth. A
study conducted by Kamar (2008) revealed that parents of moderate
to high income and educational background held beliefs and
expectations that were closer than those of low-income families
to the actual performance of their children, Low-income families
instead had high expectations and performance beliefs that did
not correlate well with their children’s actual school
performance.

Recent studies of Kenya populations indicated that children

from two-parent homes performed better than children from single-
parent homes on a variety of social indicators. For instance,
Kitainge (2011) found that in most regions within Kenya children
living with one parent were less likely to be in school at age 17
than their two-parent counterparts. In another study by Kamar
(2008) showed that a significant positive relationship was found
between father presence and self- esteem. In addition, father-
present youths also exhibited stronger scholastic achievement and
more stable peer relations. Another recent study (Otieno, 2010)
found that living in a single-parent home was a significant risk
factor for violent behavior in Nyanza, rift valley and north
eastern children. For given levels of ability, student effort as
determined by family background is one of the most important
input factors for the production of education, and different from
other inputs like teacher quality, school autonomy, or class size
( Otieno, 2010).

However, relationship between family background in the

academic performance has received only limited attention both on
theoretical and empirical grounds. One of the few works in the
theoretical literature that takes into account family background,
is a paper Ng’ang’a (2008) who compared a standard grading system
to a competitive grading system in terms of the level of student
effort each family was able to motivate, and showed that the
family system's relative advantage depended crucially on the
nature of the family background distorting academic achievement.
Ng’ang’a (2008) further showed that when leisure is a normal good
and students are given monetary rewards by their parents
unrelated to their academic performance they become less
diligent. Ng’ang’a (2008) however focused on the motivation that
families provide to students in terms of monetary rewards. This
therefore creates a gap on other ways that family background
influences the performance of students. There is also need for
empirical study from a Kenyan situation, to assess whether the
findings in Canada and U.S.A can be generalized in Kenya hence
creating the gap that this study sought to fill.

Mbeere North district is a district in Mbeere County. It is

one of the thirteen districts in Eastern Province with a
population of 89,035 people and it covers an area of 744.80
square Kilometers. Mbeere North district is made up of two
divisions 4 Euverore and Siakago and it has a total of 18 public
secondary schools with a total of 3,500 students.

Much concern has been drawn on the extent to which

adjustment problem and poor academic performance among a
significant numbers of health technology students become pressing
issue facing health education. The concerns need to be studied in
detail and solutions need to be built into the curriculum in
order to help students with such difficulties.

In the attend, different form of researches have been

carried on the difficulty in learning in school but little done
in the area of comparing family environment, school adjustment
problems and academic achievement among students in tertiary
institutions. And it is an area that requires serious attention.
This is because people have different family orientations, which
has to do with their behaviors either to be good or bad. This
includes how to cope with situations they come across in their
daily lives and adjust to the expected behavior or task required
of them.

Family environment appears to influence school adjustment

as well as academic performance. Families in general and parents
in particular, have often been deemed to be the most important
support system available to the child. The strongest factor in
molding a child’s personality or behavior is his relationship
with his parents. Students who have struggled academically in
most cases are at higher risk of school avoidance, and ultimately
dropping out, than those who are successful. Ideally school is a
place that makes students feel competent and successful, which
breeds motivation and self-confidence. For the struggling
students, however, school is often a place that only serves to
reinforce his already low self-esteem. He does not see himself as
a “good student” nor does he believe it is possible for him to
ever become a good student, especially if he has participated in
past interventions that have only proven to be frustrating and
unsuccessful. The student attempts to avoid these feelings of
failure by staying home (Lytton and Romney, 1992).

This study has investigated the perception of family

environment and its influence on school adjustment. It has also
investigated the effect of parent – student’s relationship on
academic performance in School. And it has estimated the rate of
poor adjustment among students in health institutions. Lastly it
has investigated the effect of gender on the adjustment in school
environment.

The findings of this study are additional information to

the existing relationship between students, lecturers, parents of
the students and student behavioural problems in Nigerian
schools. It has also identified critical areas for the
improvement of academic performance and coping strategies among
students in Nigeria institutions. And also the study can be
consider as an important material for further studies. In order
to ensure focus on this study the following hypotheses were
formulated.

Having poor academic performance is because of lack of

parental guidance it will affect the growth and development of a
child. Parents are the one who can support and guide the child
and without them the child’s life can be miserable. Having enough
financial expenses for the children’s education is important also
in the role of parents. The lack of care will affect the health
and behaviour of the child especially to their academic
performance. Education is one of the rights of a person
especially to the children. Giving them education is a must for
this will enhance their personality as they grow up. An educated
person can contribute something in the community to make it more
modernize that is why all people deserve to have education. The
family has a big role in the child’s education and development.
Supporting your child in everything will result to good behaviour
and development. There is a higher chance that child can be more
developed if the parents are active in helping their child and
they know something in the field of education. Educated parents
can encourage their child to strive more in life. The good grades
of the child requires or involves the parental guidance. The
good influence of the family gives the chance of the children to
be better in academic performance.

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