FACTORS OF LOW PERFORMANCE AMONG STUDENTS IN RURAL AREAS

FACTORS OF LOW PERFORMANCE AMONG STUDENTS IN RURAL AREAS

Introduction

Impact of education in the area of health is indisputable especially in the area of mortality rate. However, in other to lower Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR) Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) and achieve the lowest possible Total Fertility Rate (TFR) in rural areas education has a crucial role to play in girls that dwell in the rural areas, better education of a female child or pass through a process of learning can drastically reduce maternal and infant mortality; it will also bring about positive impact for family health, birth spacing, few children and fertility related issues, better care of children, seeking right services and counsel at the right point in time and the right places, and promote health and survival and life expectancy along with economic productivity for a better standard of living.

Education can initiate social change by transforming the outlook and attitude of man; it can also bring about a change in the pattern of social relations and thereby causing social change. This social change can be good behavior, respect to elders, obeying one’s culture and all these have been the impact of education in the rural development process. Be that as it may, education in Nigeria is now more of a private enterprise, but a huge government venture that has witnessed a progressive evolution of government complete and dynamic intervention and active participation. The federal government of Nigeria has adopted education as an instrument par-excellent for effecting national development

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FACTORS OF LOW PERFORMANCE AMONG STUDENTS IN RURAL AREAS

There are many factors that contribute to the differences in performance between students in rural and urban areas.

Family Factor

In the rural areas, the family is one of the factors that determine their child performance. In this study, students in rural areas have low performance compared to students in urban areas because it is related to their parent's education. Majority of parents in rural areas are less educated than parents in urban areas. The family background is the most important and weighty factor in determining the academic performance of learners (Adell, 2002: 91). The survey found that rural students felt no pressure to attain good performance when their parents’ expectations towards education were low. Parental encouragement has a positive influence on their child performance and at rural areas, most of the parents did not care about their child academic performance. Some experts believe that parent expectations are the most influential factor affecting youth decisions to pursue education (Esterman & Hedlund, 1995; Smith, Beaulieu, & Seraphine, 1995).

Low Socio-economic Factor

The students’ background relates to the low socioeconomic factor of their family also one of the factors that effect their performance in education. Most of the students that live in rural areas come from low-income family. Their parents cannot provide them with enough educational resources at home. Compared to students in urban areas, the majority of them come from high-income families and their parents afford to send them to their tuition classes in order to get better performance. Urban students also can buy additional books for their references while for the rural students, they non-exposure to educational resources and it will affect their performance compared to those who have access to such resources. Students who have access to more resources are an advantage compared to those from poor families because they can know more about the latest developments around them thus can assist them to improve their performance at schools.

Lack of Facilities and Resources

Education promotes human capital as an asset that has greater or lower rates of return depend on the quality of education that is provided. Some of the factors that contribute to poor performance are lack or resources and poor facilities in most schools, especially in rural areas. Some of the schools in rural areas are dilapidated compared to those in urban areas. The problem regarding the unequal distribution of resources between provinces, rural and urban areas are still intact (Motala & Pampalis, 2001:56). Several schools in rural areas do not have laboratories and this situation means that students learn science by rote learning. Facilities are important in order to make the teaching and learning process more effective. Students that live in rural areas will less expose to the using of technology because the facilities that were provided for them are not sufficient. This will make their learning process will be less effective and they will have less knowledge about current issues as well as how to use technology. Students in urban areas have many advantages in their learning process and with the advent of technology, it will make easier for their study. They will more understanding with their learning with the facilities provided.

Less Qualified Teachers

The teacher is an important role in order to create good performance students. Most of the teacher did not want to post in a rural area because they think it will bring a difficulty to them. So, the majority of teachers that were sent to the rural areas are the new teachers that have less experience in teaching. Awoniyi (1981) remarked that there is a direct relationship between the quality of teaching personnel and the quality of the education process. Most of them did not master the teaching technique yet because they are still new in the teaching area. When we compared to students in urban areas they usually have teachers that have good communications skills in English. Most of the teachers compete for placement in urban schools. So, the rural school will have an inadequate teacher and it will make their learning progress disturbed and not running properly.

WAYS TO ADDRESS THE LEARNING GAP DIFFERENCES BETWEEN RURAL AND URBAN STUDENTS

In order to overcome the differences performance between students in rural and urban areas, several ways should be taken.

The Role of Government

The government has to play a role in improving educational outcomes for rural students. The government should provide enough facilities to the schools that located in rural areas same as the urban schools. Besides that, the government also must provide financial support to the students that live in rural areas where we know that most of them come from low-income families and not affordable to gain a better education and services. Facilities that were provided must be fair and equal treatment should be given to rural schools same like urban schools. In addition, best educators also should be placed in rural schools because they can help students to improve their performance. Good teachers will produce good students. Most important is the government should ensure that teachers are adequately qualified to teach the subject that allocated for them and they can do their work properly. The education department also should visit all schools to establish and verify their needs to ensure that resources are allocated in line with their needs and status.

Role of Parents

While the teachers play their role at school, parents should play their roles at home. Although parents in rural areas have no education, they can help their children performance in terms of giving them moral support and motivation to learn. Even they cannot help in terms of providing resources to learn, they can give support to their child to study hard to change the fate of their family. Parents should realize how important of education to their child and their future. Parents can always ask their child about their learning progress and accompanied them during doing their work. They also must always care about their child performance and monitor their progress.

The Role of Teachers

The teacher is an important force in school learning. Teachers also one of the sources that can help in overcomes the problem of low performance among rural students. Teachers can help in encouraging students to study hard and help them to complete most of their work at school during study time, where students can ask teachers if they do not understand the lesson. If they are doing work at home, nobody can help them since their parents might not be able to assist because most of the parents in rural areas have less education. Teachers should encourage their students to participate in many activities because it will give them the opportunity to build their self-confident and positive self-esteem. Besides that, the teacher also can create a caring and supportive environment where students will feel more comfortable during their learning. A good relationship between students and teacher also good in order to improve students’ performance where when teachers are close with the students, students will feel easy and not shy to ask anything that they do not understand.

The Role of a Student

The students itself should realize the importance of education in their future lives. If they want a better life in the future they must study hard to get a good performance. Usually, students in the rural area do not care about their education and most of them drop out from schooling. This is because they do not have motivation in their study and their parents also did not care about their performance. So in order to overcome the gap performance between students in rural and urban areas, rural students should set their mind that education is important to change their lives. When they have a mindset that education is important, they will study hard in order to get a good achievement.

Conclusion

There is a significant difference between urban and rural school students in their use of learning strategies. The urban school students prefer peer learning whereas rural school students use elaboration as their effective learning strategies. While comparing all the nine strategies discussed in this study, urban school students are far ahead in almost all the strategies except for elaboration and organization. Rural school students’ family background, attitude, environment,  cultural value system, limited exposure to the learning resources and materials are the major  causes of these differences

In summary, it is clear from these views that as a result of these numerous problems affecting the academic performance of our educational system, the system has not only failed to ensure mass participation but also practice discrimination in manpower distribution, infrastructural facilities.

However, evidence gathered from the related literature identified basis favoring urban schools than rural schools. The inequalities are made worse by differences in the number of teachers, educational facilities and other inputs between schools serving different geographical areas.

References

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