Abstract

The study examined the influence of single parenthood on the academic performance of students in Central Senatorial District of Edo State. Single parenthood background variables covered include: single parenting type, single parents’ educational qualification and their income status. The study adopted the ex-post facto design. The population of the study consists of the 5,048 Senior Secondary School one (SSS I) students in the 69 public secondary schools in Central Senatorial District of Edo State. A sample of 350 senior secondary school one (SS1) students were covered of which only 145 students from single parents families were included in the analysis. The research instrument used for the collection of data was a checklist titled: “Parents’ Socioeconomic Status and Students’ Academic Achievement Checklist - PASESAC”. The instrument of the study was not subjected to any reliability technique. The researcher personally administered the questionnaire to students after due permission was taken from the school principal. Frequency, percentages and inferential statistics were used for the study. The Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and Tukey Highest Significant Difference (HSD) mean post-hoc test were used to test for the significance of the hypothesis at 0.05 level of significance. The result showed that single parenting type, single parents’ educational and income status has significant influence on students’ academic achievement in secondary schools in Central Senatorial District of Edo State. It was recommended that personnel and educational psychologist have a role to play in providing moral support to students of single parents from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.