Low Socioeconomic Status due Poor Academic Performance among Children (Essay Sample)

Low socioeconomic status causes poor academic performance among children: A case study of learners' academic performance among families in an informal settlement.
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Low social-economic status causes poor academic performance among children: A case study of learners' academic performance among families in an informal settlement.
Several scholars have described poverty as a human condition and way of life that affects a person's interactions with the world. Over the years, policymakers, educators, and concerned citizens worldwide have joined forces to address thiscomplex and pervasive problem that seems difficult to solve. Poverty lowers the economic status of an individual as well as that of the community. Low social-economic status tends to affect academic status negatively. We shall conduct a prospective study to verify the validity of this statement; whether low social-economic status causes poor performance among children.
This prospective hypothesis will involve researching five Elementary schools in shanty settlements within urban areas. The social-economic status informed the selection of this area of the population living within. The learners' concentration in these areas has been eroded by their very existence (Pettigrew, 2009). For our control group, we will get subjects from a neighboring area with higher social-economic status than the experimental group. The children living in this area belong to wealthy parents and attend schools with better facilities, and their parents are more involved in their academic progress.
In its basic form, this study may not give conclusive evidence because there are some confounding factors that we need to deal with. Firstly, it could be that the children's academic performance results from children's levels of motivation or the levels of qualification of the teachers who are handling them. Secondly, there could be the possibility that the results posted in internal exams in the schools are not a true reflection of the children’s performance but a marketing strategy used by school administrations to get high enrolment of learner hence more profits (Paik, 2002).
We will minimize the doubts raised by the above confounding factors if we use a matching technique. In this case, the study will mainly focus on sampling the five elementary schools in the identified areas. The study will utilize the Elementary schools from each area discussed above to form the sample to receive valid and reliable data. A sample is a group in a research study from which information is obtained.The researcher will gather the information for this study by using questionnaires and interview schedules as the research instruments. This technique will be used because it allows every member of the population to be selected without bias. It is also easy to use (Bard et al. 2006).
These instruments will have both closed and open-ended types of questions. The questionnaires will be administered to teachers and school administration. It will assist the researcher in having an overall view of the levels of parent participation in children's performance, school development, and school performance trends. The teachers will also give their view on whether they believe there is a relationship between the poverty levels of parents. Their abilities to facilitate their children's education include paying their school fees to keep them in school, buying relevant learning materials, and participating in the development of school facilities. (Arnold & Doctoroff, 2003)
The parents will be engaged in interviews so that the researcher can establish the poverty levels of the parents in the area of study and their levels of interest and participation in their children's education.
The researcher will analyze records such as school enrolment and attendance registers, parents' employment status and their annual income estimates, school equipment, and resources and performance mark sheets, which will be collected and analyzed.
The researcher would expect that children who attend schools established in shanty settlements in urban areas come from low-income families who can't afford to live in well-developed estates in the cities. The parents struggle to provide basic needs due to low wages and a lack of stable sources of income. It will impact their abilities to provide the necessary educational support to their children hence affecting th