Social risk factors in school performance

This paper explores some of the risk factors responsible for low school performance of the 4th to 6th level children of public elementary schools in the city of Cuenca, Ecuador. To this end, children with respectively low and high academic performance, parents, teachers and school directors were interviewed, using a template from which the population characteristics, the socioeconomic conditions, attitude of children and teachers, and performance variables were evaluated. For this study a total of 786 surveys, in different public elementary schools in the city of Cuenca were conducted, of which 77 were eliminated by incompleteness. The results showed that the low school performance of the children in first instance is caused by health problems, malnutrition, the high rotation of teachers, the socioeconomic situation of the parents, and the grade of repetition of school years. Furthermore, it was shown that boys overall score less than girls.