Impact of Parents' Occupation on Mathematical Achievement of their S.L.C. Pass Students

Abstract

The prime concern of this study is to determine the impact of parents' occupation on mathematical achievement of S.L.C. Pass Students. The efforts of the subject teacher, the school climate and the school management is insufficient to achieve higher level of performance; there can be many factors like Parents' occupation, environment at home and society, policy of the nation, awareness of education and job prospects of educated students, etc. affect the achievement. Here the researcher has chosen 'Parents' occupation' as one of the major factors of the students' achievement in mathematics as a subject and tried to answer the following questions: 1. Does the Mathematical achievement of S.L.C. students differ by their parents' occupation? 2. Does the Mathematical achievement of S.L.C. students in Private and Community school differ by their parents' occupation? The population of the study consisted of 103 S.L.C. 2069 pass-out students from both private and community schools, in which 66 from a private school and 37 from community school. The researcher has categorized the sample parents according to their occupation into four groups as Job-holders, Businessmen, Foreign workers and Low-income respectively. This research is based on case study design. Three sets of questionnaire based on the research topics was prepared and an interview was taken with available parents and students. The necessary secondary data were taken from the school records. After coding, decoding and triangulating, the available data were tabulated and analyzed with the help of statistical tools - ANOVA and t-test at 5% level of confidence. After the detailed analysis and interpretation of data, the following results were found. Achievement of mathematics students varied by their parents' occupation. Students whose parents were in business, job-holding, foreign employment and in low paying jobs achieved mathematical skill and knowledge in the descending order. Students from privately owned schools scored higher in mathematics than from government-funded community schools. The difference in achievement is less significant among students from business, job holder or foreign employment background. Students who enjoyed more sharing and caring and who were provided with more material support achieved higher, irrespective of their occupational background. This research would be fruitful to government, policy makers, stake-holders, parents, school management and subject teacher to increase academic quality and mathematics performance.