Socio-Economic Profiling of Students and its Impact on Learning Outcomes

Abstract

Every student has a need; and the topmost aspiration of every student is to be self-fulfilled with commendable performance in school. For this aspiration to be achieved, many factors such as the kind of learning environment, teaching methods, socio-economic background, students’ motivation amongst others have been found as precursors. In this context, socio-economic characteristics of students include gender, age, class, daily means of transportation to school, geographical location of the school, type of residential accommodation they lived in, its ownership amongst others. This paper presents findings of a study carried out to measure the impact of socio-economic profiling of students on their academic performance. Quantitative data were collected from twelve sampled secondary schools: nine private owned schools and three public owned schools across three senatorial districts in Lagos State, Nigeria. Multi-stage sampling technique was adopted using a hybrid of three techniques: purposive sampling, quota and random sampling to select the approved schools, group them in quota and final selection of respondents respectively. A total of 674 copies of the questionnaire were administered by hand during the first term of the 2018/2019 academic session. A total of 488 were analysed using descriptive statistics, cross tabulation and regression analysis. The result identified that amongst several socio-economic characteristics of learners, the geographical location of the school, type of school (private or public) and learning styles of students have more significance to impacting students’ learning outcomes. It further shows the comparative results of its impact between private schools and public schools in the study area. This paper recommends that instilling internal motivation in students irrespective of their socio-economic background can boost their self-esteem and self-actualisation. This will in turn influence their performance favourably.