Educational aspiration of high school children from single parent families

The recent increase in single parent families affecting the educational aspiration among children. The present paper examines the educational aspiration of high school children from single parent families of Dharwad taluk which was conducted during 2019-2020. A total of 240 children were selected from urban (n=120) and rural (n=120) areas of Dharwad taluk through purposive sampling technique. A self structured questionnaire was used to collect the demographic characteristics of children. Mazumdar Educational Aspiration Inventory (2004) was used to assess the educational aspiration among children. Socio-economic status scale by Aggarwal et al. (2005) was used to measure the socioeconomic status of children. The study outcomes highlighted that, educational aspiration was significantly associated with locality of children. Urban children had high educational ambitions than rural children. Gender was associated significantly with educational ambitions in both areas. Age was not associated significantly with children in both the areas. Girls had high aspirations than boys in both urban and rural areas. Ordinal position was not associated significantly with educational aspiration of children in both areas. Study further showed that children residing status was associated significantly with educational ambitions of children in both regions indicating that children residing with their mothers had high educational aspirations than their counterparts. Socio-economic status showed significant difference with educational ambitions of children in both the regions which points out that children with poor socio-economic status had low educational aspiration than children with upper socio-economic status. The study showed that nearly 24 percent of children need intervention programme to improve their educational attainment and ambitions.