PARENTAL MARITAL STATUS AND PUPILS’ ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE

Abstract

The study investigates the parental marital status on the academic performance of primary school pupils in Dutse municipal council, Jigawa state. The objective of the study is to find the behavior problem associated with the academic performance of primary school pupils and to find the gender difference on the academic performance of the victims of divorce in Dutse municipal council primary schools. This study adopted a descriptive survey design which describes systematically the facts qualities or characteris????cs of a given population, events or area of interest as factually and accurately as possible to answer the question of the problem under the study. The population of this study comprises of the primary schools pupils from the seven primary schools in Dutse municipal, Jigawa state in which 253 pupils formed the sample size of the study using Krejcie and Morgan Formula. In the process of collection, the data of the
study in the selected sample, the researcher developed teachers’ questionnaires to collect the data. It was developed by the researcher under the guidance of the supervisor to extract information from the respondents. A simple percentile is used in analyzing the data from the respondents. The findings of the study revealed that children of divorce homes are disturbed psychologically, pupils suffering from parents’ separation are fearful and isolate themselves from other pupils, pupils of broken homes are antisocial and that has impact on their performance, single parentage pupils are more affected by their parents’ separation than male pupils, and single parentage pupils end up dropping out of schools because parents are not there to monitor their educa????on. The study recommended the government should provide a rehabilitative programme for the pupils of divorced family in schools so that they can adjust in
their academic performance, the schools should give proper attention to these pupils of single parenting in order to know more other challenges they face, counsellors, psychologists, social workers and teachers should identify students from divorced families and counsel them, and the parents should also be counseled on social needs of their children so that their academic work will not suffer at school.