CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1         BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY
           Academic performance is of maximum importance to parents, educators, guardians and even the Government. This of course is because of the huge impact education has on the national and economic development of the country. According to Davison institute (2004), Performance is a measure of quality and quantity of success one has in the mastery of knowledge, skills or understanding. Performance is also defined as the observable or measurable behavior of a person or an animal in a particular situation usually experimental situations. (Simpson and Weiner, 1989). This means that performance measures the aspect of behavior that can be observed at a specific period, to determine a performance, a performance test has to be conducted.
            Academic performance specifically, has been described by O’Donnell, Reeve and Smith, (2005) as the extent of an individual’s knowledge in a given task in school. In this context academic performance is the ability or level of success of the students in their academic work ( which could either be excellent or poor). Students should therefore put up personal effort in their academic works in order to achieve excellence or success in their academic work. Research have attributed students academic performance to; parental factors, peer factors, teacher factors and interpersonal competence. This study will examine the effect of social support and interpersonal competence proficiency on students’ academic performance.
             Social support can be broadly understood as an individual’s perception of general support or space for supportive behaviors (available or enacted upon) from people in their social network, which enhances their functioning and may buffer them from adverse outcomes (Malecki and Demaray, 2002). First social support comes from people in one’s social network and for students students, these potential resources may include parents, peers and teachers. Additionally, social support can take many forms such as emotional or caring support (communicating love or trust), instrumental support (providing time or resources), informational support(providing information needed) and appraisal support (providing feedbacks).
 Parent/family support
     Numerous studies and review articles published during the past 50years provide evidence of the important role that parental support plays in lives of children (Lamborn and Felbab, 2003; Peterson and Rollins, 1987). Parental support refers to “gestures or acts of caring, acceptance and assistance that are expressed by a parent toward a child (Shaw, Krause, Chatter, Comell and Ingersoll Dayton, 2004). Support from parents received during childhood is thought to have significant and lasting implication of a child’s academic life.
      Research has also demonstrated the importance of parents in the academic success and performance of children across a range of ages, populations and settings. Findings from parental monitoring research suggests that parent-child communication and support are important predictors of academic performance (Verner, 2007). Regarding the socialization process in minority families (i.e. African American and Hispanic) support (maternal and/or paternal) is related to indicators of pro-social adjustments in adolescents such as academic performance (Bean, Bush, Mckenry and Wilson, 2003; Kim, Brody and Murry, 2003), self esteem. These findings extend the notion that social support is important in the normal development of children and adolescents from diverse ethnic backgrounds. In addition, aspects of parent-child relationships specifically parental provision of emotional support, are among the strongest predictors of subjective well-being (SWB) scientific term for “happiness” during youth (Huebner, Suldo, McKnight and Smith, 2004).
Peer/classmate support
     For young children, the family (parents in particular) is typically their most important and influential source of support (Hall and Brassard, 2008). As individuals move from early childhood into later childhood and adolescence, however they spend increasingly more time outside of the home interacting and developing relationships with others including classmates and/or peers.
     Within a school context, the transition to high school can be very difficult as adolescents shift from being the oldest and most physically mature in their school to the youngest and least physically developed and recognized as students move from middle school to larger high schools (Newman et al,2007). Peer support during this transition is critical to the academic performance of adolescents as studies have shown a positive link between supportive peer relationships and academic performance i.e. Higher grade.