Impact of Broken Family on Academic Performance of Grade 6 Students at San Bartolome Elementary School

Abstract

A broken family is defined as a family that is split or separated due to a variety of reasons. A broken family can cause children to question their self-worth, thereby leading to experiencing unnecessary grief, guilt, and confusion. Life in a broken home is having a single parent, and the said family can be stressful for both the child and the parent. A family could be broken due to several reasons, but the most common are financial matters, a behavior of parents, religion, infidelity, and parental influence or a friend’s influence. These causes can affect the student’s academic performance, such as getting low grades, cutting classes, suffering from depression, getting misguided, and deciding to be independent. A descriptive method was used in this study, and purposive sampling was used to choose 20 Grade 6students as respondents. The gathered data were constructed through a checklist that was pretested to two Grade 5students who were not part of the respondents for validation. The questionnaires were administered personally to briefly explain their contents and patiently wait for the respondents to fill it up and ensure 100% retrieval of the said instrument. The raw data were reviewed, tallied, and analyzed using different statistical tools, such as frequency and percentage distribution, weighted mean, and ranking. The result showed that the highest weighted mean of 4.05 was obtained for having unfaithful parents, having irresponsible parents obtained the weighted mean of 4, and jealousy achieved the weighted mean of 3.75. These causes can affect the academic performance of students. The academic performance of students gets affected because they cannot focus on their studies. The highest impact was depression with the weighted mean of 4.65, cutting classes obtained the weighted mean of 4.15, and having low grades obtained the weighted mean of 4.1. These are the top five recommendations as ranked by the respondents: 1. parents should give love, guidance, and support; 2. teachers should be loving and understanding; 3. students should have a quiet place to study; 4. students should lessen their time spent watching tv and playing computer games; and 5. students, parents, and teachers should collaborate. The results showed that parents should make sure that although they are separated from their children, they can still give the attention their children need from their parents. In school, teachers must understand the behavior of the affected students and give them support. Students can make their situation a source of inspiration to persevere and achieve their goals in life.