Effects of Poverty on Academic Progress of Students in Niger State College of Education, Minna: Implications for Counselling

Abstract

This research project, examined the effect of poverty on academic progress of students in college of education, Minna. The background to the study was that poverty remains a stubborn fact of life and interrupts students’ academic progress. The problem of this study is that, a lot of students in college of education, Minna due vacate the school to search for registration fees, while the lectures are going on. It disturbed a good number of students psychologically, most especially when the deadline for tuition fee payment to register the student is published. In ability to capture them for the examination as a result of no registration payment due to poverty also disturbed them mentally. This study is significance to all stakeholders, most especially the students and their parents or guardians. Thus, the main purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of poverty on academic progress of students in College of Education Minna. The other purposes were explicitly stated under three (3) specific objectives, research questions and hypotheses were also stated and tested. The scope of the study focused on students’ interruptions during lectures as a result of poverty and not on their intelligent quotient. The study reviewed the previous related empirical studies of Taiye (2020) in Akoko Local Government of Ondo State and the findings revealed that parental source of income and students’ health status do have significance effect on students’ poverty and affect their academic progress. The study has 285 Population out of which 65 sample size was derived. The T-test was used to answer the research questions, while the chi-square was adopted in testing the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. It was recommended that school management should utilize the available natural resource in the college to support and empower such students.