The Influence of Urban Poverty on Students’ Academic Optimism: Does Government Assistance Play a Role?

Azam Othman,Merah Souad,Moha Asri Abdullah,Norbaiduri Ruslan,Suhailah Hussien,Hairuddin Mohd Ali

doi:10.31436/ijes.v9i4.378

Abstract

The present study investigated the relationship between urban poor students’ perceptions of government assistance and poverty and their level of academic optimism. A survey was administered to 500 urban poor students in two major Malaysian cities, Kuala Lumpur and Johor Bahru. The students were identified and randomly selected for the study with the help of their respective schools. AMOS version 24 was used to test the hypothesised model using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM). The findings revealed a significant direct association between students’ perceptions of poverty and academic optimism. However, no significant indirect influence was found between students’ perceptions of poverty and their academic optimism through government assistance. These findings suggest that government assistance programmes are not necessarily a contributor to students’ academic optimism. The lack of any significant influence between students’ perceptions of poverty and academic optimism, through government assistance, may indicate a need to re-evaluate the existing assistance programmes rendered by the government to students in the urban poor category.

Highlights

In the process of gaining a significant place among the educational hubs at the global level, Malaysian government, every year, allocates the highest budget for the education sector, reflecting its serious commitment to this aim
The results showed an acceptable degree of intercorrelation among the 18 questionnaire items and reasonable factorability of the data that justified the employment of Principal Components Analysis (PCA)
The findings of the present study suggested that government assistance programmes were not instrumental in improving urban poor students’ overall academic optimism

Summary

Introduction

In the process of gaining a significant place among the educational hubs at the global level, Malaysian government, every year, allocates the highest budget for the education sector, reflecting its serious commitment to this aim. Urbanisation increases as more people leave their villages in search for better life opportunities, jobs, education, and services in big towns and cities. This internal exodus does not necessarily mean that people themselves are becoming urbanised. Ravallion (1997) explained that a country’s urbanisation opens the door for more overcrowded and unplanned slum areas surrounding big cities and metropolitans This will lead to the creation of ghettos where poverty is rampant, in addition to the lack of basic services and security which is already paving the way for crime rates to rise

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Discussion

Conclusion