Abacus (Mathematics Education Series) Vol. 45, No. 1, December 2020 1 EFFECT OF SOCIO-ECONOMIC BACKGROUND ON SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS’ ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENTS IN MATHEMATICS Ehiwario, J.C., Aghamie, S.O. and Nwaka, R.N. Department of Mathematics, College of Education, Agbor Email: aghamie@gmail.com Abstract The study examined the effect of socio-economic background on students’ academic achievement in mathematics. The study adopted a simple opinion survey research design. The population comprises all the students (both public and private) in secondary schools in Ika South Local Government Area. Stratified random sampling scheme was used to select a sample size of 100 students from the population. Questionnaire was used as the instrument for data collection and the data collected were analyzed using simple percentage and chi-square (  2 ) statistical methods. The study revealed among other things that financial/economic status of a family has a significant relationship with student’s academic performance in mathemati cs. Also that family size of a student has significant influence on his/her performance in mathematics. The study equally revealed that the educational status of a family affects the level of achievement of a child. The study then concludes that parental economic status, students’ family size, educational status of the parents, parents’ marital status among others are some of the socio-economic factors that affect the student’s performance in mathematics. The study recommends among other things that the Government should provide education facilities and scholarship for those students from the lower economics status in the society, the Government should increase the rate of education/enlightenment campaign on family planning and child spacing to help reduce child birth to the number parents can take good care of. Keywords: Socio-economic background, Achievement, Mathematics, Educational status, Marital status and family size. Introduction Mathematics is a compulsory subject at primary and secondary school levels of education in Nigeria. This is due to its usefulness in almost all spheres of life. It is a pre-requisite for science and technology base courses of study. Even in social sciences. It is also useful for economic life of individual. Any nation wishing to grow economically and technologically must ensure that her citizenry are vast in mathematics. According to Ale (2000), Science and technology has become the basic tools for the development of modern society and a measure of the level of development and mathematics remained the bedrock on which scientific and technological development can be built. In spite of the laudable roles Mathematics has played in the national development of Nigeria, students‟ achievement has not been encouraging. This reflects consistently in low achievement levels in mathematics among students at the secondary school level. Results from Junior secondary III (JS3), Senior secondary certificate Examinations (SSCE), Mathematics both WAEC and NECO are instances of poor mathematics achievement in the country (Gomoha, 2015). For many years the failure rate in mathematics has been dramatically high in our schools. This does not spell well for a nation