Single-parenting influence on child’s academic performances at MutareJunior School, Zimbabwe

Abstract

The economic hardship that has plagued Zimbabwe has led to a shift from the traditionally intact family to a singleparenthood family. Many factors lead to single parenthood including divorce, separation of all kinds and deaths. Single parenthood negatively impacts on students’ academic development. The researcher explored influences of SingleParenthood to Academic-Performances (AP) of Grade 6 and 7 students at Mutare Junior School in the Manical and Region of Zimbabwe. The researcher used ‘cross-sectional study design’ to collect data using criterion attainment tests, ‘the Wide Range Achievement Test Level 1 (WRAT-1)’ on 80 students under controlled situations having 40 Single-Parent-Homes (SPH)and 40Double-Parent-Homes (DPH)students. School-established examinations complemented data from theWRAT-1 outcome. Tables and ‘T-tests’ were used for analysis of data. Results revealed children from DPH performing statistically better on the criterion test than those from SPH (t = −4.928, significance value 0.05). The results also indicated males performing better than females both from SPH on the criterion test (t = −4.196, significance value 0.05). In future, research should focus on different single-parent homes to AP.

Keywords: Academic performance, influence, pupils, school, single parenting