CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Background to the Study

Students’ education is closely linked to their life chances, income and wellbeing (Battle and Lewis 2002). Therefore, it is important to have a clear understanding of what benefits or hinders ones educational attainment. There are several areas of the environment that are mostly linked to academic achievement these include student role performance (SRP) factors, school factors, family factors and peer factors. Student role performance is how well an individual fulfills the role of student in educational settings, sex, race, school effort, extracurricular activities, deviance are all important on SRP and have shown to affect the academic achievement of students. Environment such as the neighborhood, family background, relationship between teachers and students. Research has shown that socio-economic status, parental involvement, and family size are particularly important factors (Major Banks, 2006). Peer influence can also affect student performance, peer pressure and peer conformity could lead to students participating in risk taking behaviours which have been found to have a negative indirect effect on the academic achievement (Santor and Kusumaker, 2000).

Over the years, authorities have sought to find out the reason for the downward trend in the academic achievement of secondary school students. From biological perspective, the reasons have been attributed to reason of a reflection of these students genetic inferiority. In other words, the inability of most students from rural areas to achieve academic excellence in an inmate deficiency.

Undoubtly, it is the failure of some schools to transmit the values and cultural patterns necessary for the students to reach optimal academic performance. Factors affecting a student educational achievement include the culture of school the student attendance, the attitude of the principal and teachers to the students, motivation and the value transmitted by the school in general. The older theory of school improvement held, that is the result of improperly implemented research based educational programs.

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