A comparative assessment of the academic performance among public and private Junior High Schools in the Tamale Metropolis of Ghana

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JUNE, 2016
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Abstract
The purpose of developing any educational policy is to ensure quality human resource development that will propel the country‟s development agenda. Education without quality is tantamount to no education at all. For more than two decades now, more than 30% of all the pupils who write BECE annually do not get admission into the senior high, technical and vocational schools as designed in the Ghanaian education system. The failure rate among these children in recent times is however alarming and this requires all hands on deck to support to put an end to this menace. In this study, an attempt was made to establish the causes of high poor BECE outcomes in the Tamale Metropolis and to establish reasons why private basic schools were doing considerably better in external examination than their public counterparts. The study adopted descriptive research design and multi-stage sampling technique was used to select the respondents for the study. In all 250 respondents made up of six headteachers, 20 teachers, 112 parents and 112 JHS graduates who completed in 2013 Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) took part in the study. Four research instruments were formulated, comprising interview guide for heads of schools, teachers, parents and a questionnaire for the JHS graduates from public and private schools. Data was analyzed using cross tabulation, percentages correlation, and mean scores to draw conclusions. The results of the study revealed that private schools were performing academically better than their public counterparts in the Tamale Metropolis due to many reasons. These include the fact that the private schools were more resourced, had parents of pupils whose socio-economic status was higher and hence were more involved in their children’s education than the public. Teacher motivation was quite low in both public and private selected schools and the high academic achievements of private school students were attributed to strict internal supervision of the school heads/proprietors. The study recommended that future educational policies and programs should include parental involvement in child education by specifying roles and responsibilities of parents to ensure high cooperation between household and schools operations.
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A Thesis submitted to the Department of Planning, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the award of degree of Master of Science Development Policy and Planning,
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