Parental Occupation and Academic Achievement of High School Students in India

Abstract

To study the relationship of parental occupation with academic achievement of the students, the Progressive Matrices Test was administered to 1359 randomly selected high-school students (age range 14-17 years) studying in 22 urban and six rural secondary schools in the Lucknow district. Data for parental occupation and marks in the high-school examination were also collected. It was observed that there was positive relationship between the level of parental occupation and mean high-school marks. Analysis of variance showed that the differences in the mean achievement scores of the students belonging to different occupational groups were statistically significant (F = 32.50 p<.01). Analysis of covariance showed that this relationship held good even when intelligence as measured by Progressive Matrices Test was held constant (F = 24.34 p<.01).