Effect of Socio-Economic Status on Mathematics Achievement of Grade VIII

Abstract

This is a survey study related to the “Effect of socio-economic status in mathematics achievement at grade VIII”. The objective of this study was to find the effect of socio-economic status on mathematics achievement. Two hundred students from ten government schools in Gulmi district were selected through stratified random sampling. School records, students and parents questionnaire form were used to collect data. The draft interview forms with the selected list of variables and research questions were given to the experts at the department of Mathematics Education at T.U. According to their suggestion some items were changed and some were modified. For the reliability of the tool the researcher applied test-retest method. The collected data were analyzed by using statistical tools such as Mean, standard deviation, correlation coefficient, t-test, and linear regression. The mean score of students of educated, literate and illiterate fathers were 46.31, 37.66, and 32.75 respectively. The mean score of student whose father were engaged in job, business and agriculture were 45.61, 38.24, and 34.94 respectively. The mean score of students with small, middle and large family size were 46.77, 36.89, and 32.30 respectively. The mean score of students with high, medium and low family income were 48.30, 39.53, and 34.06 respectively. The values in t-test between the students achievement whose father were educated and literate, educated and literate were found to be 2.82 and 2.22 respectively. In the test t-values between the student achievement whose fathers were in the job and business, job and agriculture were 2.10 and 2.891. Similarly, t-value between the student’s achievement whose family size was small and middle, small and large was 3.016 and 3.489 respectively. And the t-values between the student achievement whose family income was high and medium, high and low were 2.416 and 2.93 respectively. All the above t-values were found to be significant at 0.05. But t-values between the students achievement with literate and illiterate fathers, fathers engaged in business and agriculture, middle and large family, medium and low family income were 1.169, 0.986, 1.327 and 1.796 respectively which were not significant at 0.05. The positive correlation of student’s achievement and parent’s education, occupation and family income were 0.226, 0.214, and 0.242 respectively. But the variable family size was negatively correlated with achievement in mathematics. The variables family education, family income, family size were found to be strongly related to student achievement in mathematics and father occupation was found to be less influence on student's achievement in mathematics. On the basis of above findings, the researcher concluded that the socio-economic status of the student effects directly in the mathematics achievement.