The Impact of Family Type on Bhutanese Secondary Students’ Academic Performance

Abstract

Family support has played an influential role in a child’s development, particularly in education and learning. However, little research is undertaken in developing countries related to student academic achievement and their family type. This current study aimed to study the differences and similarities in students' academic achievement scores between broken and intact families. Family type in this study refers to either broken or intact. The broken family in this study has particular reference to children from divorced families only. This study used a quantitative approach to collect information about children’s family status, and a secondary source was used to collect the overall grade point average from respective schools. A total of 312 students participated in this study, and their age ranged from 11- 19 years. The findings showed that the Bhutanese Secondary students from broken families outperformed those living with both parents. There was a statistically significant mean difference of |28%| between the broken and intact families. The results of the Pearson correlation showed that there was no statistical relationship between academic achievement, gender, and age. However, a positive small-sized relationship was found between the family type and academic achievement |r=0.11, p=0.05|. Similarly, after adjusting for ‘age’ as a covariate, a one-way analysis of covariance showed no statistically significant difference in academic score. The stream and the effect size was |η2 = 0.001|