Influence of Demographic Variables and Socio-Economic Status on the Attainment of Girl-Child Education in Kwande Local Government Area

The study investigated influence of demographic variables and socio-economic status on attainment of girl- child education in Kwande local government area of Benue state. Simple random sampling method was used for selection of one hundred and fifty participants, (71 male, 79 female). Their age range was 25-60 years, with a mean of 7.68 (SD=.68). Standardized instrument named; the girl - child educational attainment scale developed by Wakiru, (2012) was used. Also, parametric statistics (independent t-test and one way ANOVA) were used to test the difference between groups. The results from the four hypotheses show that; hypothesis one which states that there will be significant influence of parental income and the girl- child's educational attainment in Kwande local government area of Benue state was significant [t(148)=2.042,p<.01].Parents with high income (N=100; mean=7.7300, SD=.50960) scored higher than parents with low income (N=50; mean=7.5200,SD=.7512) on educational attainment of girl- child, Parents with higher educational qualification (N=110; mean=7.6750,SD=65584) were almost the same on mean score with that of parents with lower educational attainment of girl-child. There was significant negative influence of place of residence on girl- child's educational attainment in Kwande local government area of Benue state. [R=,048, R=.002, F (1.148) =.335, p<0.01J. Age, gender and educational qualification of parents had a joint negative influence on the girl- child's educational attainment in Kwande local government area of Benue state. [F(2,148df) =.176; p<.05;1=.051&R=.003J. It was recommended that federal and state government should enhance educational levels of parents to have a positive influence on the level of participation in preschool education of their girl child.