Abstract:

The compelling collection of past research has often revealed strong influences of several different variables such as intelligence, physical and mental health, motivation, personality and emotional well-being as predictors of academic achievement among primary and secondary school students. Whilst studies on these personal variables have shown much support in its influence on a student’s academic performance, recent research continues to illustrate the pivotal role familial and social variables play in academic achievement. In order to attain a comprehensive and integrated perspective of social influences on school academic achievement, this paper presents a review of the literature published on the familiar and social predictors of academic achievement since 2000. As such, this paper will examine and summarize the literature based on the relationship of academic achievement with family status influences (family income, parental education and family structure), parenting variables (parental involvement and parental control, parenting styles), peer relations (peer support and bullying) and neighborhood quality and risk. This literature review is to aid in presenting a clear framework of studies that have already been conducted in this area, and to further assist future researchers who wish continue to explore and extend on past and current findings.

Keywords:

Students, academic achievement, social influences, familial influences, peer relations, neighbourhood.