Issues and Challenges faced by Students from Single-Parent Households in Their Academic Performance at Senior Secondary Level.

Abstract

An increase in single-Parent household is noticeable in the contemporary society. Academic performance of the students living in single-parent households is affected negatively at large. Therefore, this study aims to discover the issues and challenges that single-parented students face in their academic performance at the senior secondary level. A stratified random sampling method was used and the sample size was 100 senior secondary students from singleparent households from the Moratuwa Educational Division. Three self-developed questionnaires were administered to collect data. Secondary data was collected through test scores and school-based assessments. Descriptive statistics such as frequency counts, percentage and standard deviation were computed. The main conclusion of the study is that the issues and challenges that singleparented senior secondary students face have adverse effects on their academic performance. If these issues and challenges are addressed accurately and deliberately, the senior secondary students' academic performance can be improved. This study recommends that groundlevel stakeholders like school administration, teachers, welfare societies, and educational counsellors pay their attention and help singleparents and their children to cope with their situations and enhance their academic performance.