Peer group refers to children or adolescents who are of the same age or maturity, level and have regular contact with each other.
Adolescent refers to the transitory period where a child moves to adulthood. The adolescent years fall with 12-18 years.
Positive peer influence on academic performance depends on the students self identity, self esteem and self reliance. Peer influence can mobilize student’s energy and motivate for success. Peer can and do act as positive role models. Negative behaviour that his or her value might otherwise reject. If a student is influence negatively from peer it affects their academic performance. Stronger student do have an impact on their peers and actually help improve the over all academic performance, for example, if student are friends to secondary school dropout, they have tendency to be absent from school, have lower grade and less positive attitudes towards school, they are less popular and less likely to plan to attend higher institutions. If dropout maintains contact with friends who have stayed in schools, however, these friends may provide moral support for returning to school. Attitude and aspiration of peers as well as peer expectations and standards affect individual’s efforts and achievement in school for many secondary school students, achieving in school is in direct conflict with peer acceptance.
However, it is through the peer group that students are most likely to be introduced to problem behaviour such as drinking, smoking, diligence and low academic performance. Positive peer influence generates more alternative solution to problem, proposed more mature solution and are less aggressive than students who are influenced negatively. Students are attracted to join peer groups because such groups provide them with sources of information needed to be empowered academically, vocationally, psychologically or otherwise and give the feedback about the appropriateness of their emotions especially when students are highly stressed or under stressed.
The influences that peer group have on ones academic achievement is enormous. The ways and manners by which peer influence affects students academic performance needs to be researched and documented. This will assist parents and counsellors to understand the pattern of peer influence and ways to curb negative influence.