In an effort to investigate a broad variety of influences on academic achievement a sample was drawn of seventh-grade students in Uganda. The sample of 2,293 students represented an average of 10.7 percent of the schools, and 13.1 percent of the grade-seven children. A questionnaire administered to these children included five personal statements that were attempts to discover how a child might feel about himself regarding two parallel concepts: ego-control, and self-confidence. Among industrial societies it is common to find measures of socioeconomic status, attitudes towards oneself, and performance on various tests all correlated with each other. Among Uganda primary school children this is not the case. Their attitudes are consistently stronger correlations of performance measures; furthermore, there is no relationship between those attitudes and placement along the socioeconomic status spectrum. Unlike our own society, socioeconomic status makes little or no difference to how a child might be expected to perform on tests of academic achievement, yet we have in common the fact that how a child feels about himself does affect his performance. (Author/MLF)