Exploring the Difference in Academic Performance Determinants between Public and Private Junior High Schools ()
1. Introduction
Everywhere in the world, education is becoming increasingly important. The importance of education for education’s importance for social inclusion and civic engagement, as well as its connection to development, is becoming clearer (Ministry of Education, Science and Sports [MOESS], 2001). Education is now more widely recognized than ever before as a human right and as a tool for growth and the ascent of civilization as a whole. Since the government did not own the missionary and castle schools during colonial and pre-colonial times, education in Ghana essentially began as a private business. Between 1780 and 1825, the Christiansburg Castle Government began to fund the castle schools. The first Education Ordinance, which was passed in 1852, signaled a direct public attempt to improve the country’s educational system. In 1887, a law was issued that established two types of schools. These were both government schools, which the previous administration directly oversaw, and supported schools, which were managed by non-governmental organizations. The Gold Coast’s primary school enrollment increased from 53,000 to 88,000 students in post First World War times. It became clear that the then-government alone could not meet the demands for education, it invited people and organizations that could do so to come and assist (McWilliam & Kwamena-Poh, 1978). Private and public schools have coexisted to this day to suss educational needs.
The basic education system in Ghana today lasts 12 years and normally serves students between the ages of 4 and 15. The curriculum, which is both free and required, is described as the minimal period of schooling needed to ensure that children acquire basic literacy, numeracy, and problem-solving skills, as well as skills for creativity and healthy living (Ghana Education Service [GES], 2018). Ghana has three levels of basic education: kindergarten, primary school, and junior high school (JHS). Junior high school lasts three years, primary school lasts six years, and kindergarten lasts two years. In Ghana, students who complete basic education are required to take the Basic Education Certificate Examination [BECE] (Quainoo et al., 2020). After completing the nine-year basic education curriculum, excluding kindergarten, students who successfully pass the BECE are given the Basic Education Certificate. Candidates’ grades are determined by how well they performed in the external exam (which accounts for 70% of the final grade) and by the internal (school-based) assessment marks awarded by the schools (30%). The candidates are graded on a nine-point scale, with grade 1 being the best performance and grade 9 the worst. Governments have aimed to improve school access, participation, quality, and management since the beginning of the educational reforms in 1987. Untrained teachers (also known as pupil teachers) have been given the chance to pursue professional training in the area of providing high-quality education, which will ultimately enhance the standard of teaching and learning in elementary schools.
However, there is a claim that BECE performance is subpar. It is evident that academic results are declining. From 2006 to 2016, around 3,669,138 BECE applicants took the test, according to the readily available figures. The failure of 1,562,270 (43%) of them to achieve the grades necessary for admission to any secondary, technical, or vocational institution has been established (GES, 2018). Additionally, a total of 36,849 individuals (8%) from throughout the nation were not enrolled in senior high school (SHS) in 2017 because they received grades 9 in either English or Mathematics or both (Ansah, 2017). Numerous elements that have led to students’ poor academic performance have been identified in earlier studies. These problems include poor infrastructure, a lack of instructional materials, student absences, parental disengagement, an unfavourable teaching and learning environment, and teacher-related variables (Abdallah et al., 2014; Asamoah & Acquah, 2016; Amuzu et al., 2017; Ankoma-Sey et al., 2019; Ansah et al., 2020; Fletcher, 2018; Gyan et al., 2014; Mohammed et al., 2016). There are still glaring gaps in the country’s basic education facility provision, despite numerous efforts by educational stakeholders to increase the quality and accessibility of basic education for all students. The BECE results show that there is the greatest perceived discrepancy between urban and rural schools and between private and public schools.
Public schools are performing well to some extent, even though private schools are often given credit for their superior performance. Sinusoidal patterns are found in both public and private schools’ performance according to a trend analysis of BECE performance from 2014 to 2018 undertaken by Nugba et al. (2021). Given that these two types of schools follow the identical curriculum that the Ghana Education Service (GES) developed and endorsed, one might question why there are differences in their academic performance during external tests. Although the country (Ghana) has made improvements in basic education accessibility in public schools throughout time, there are worries regarding the lower BECE performance of students in public schools. The fairly dismal performance of public schools in comparison to their counterparts in private schools has sparked public criticism. It has been generally observed that academic performance and standards in public elementary schools have declined in comparison to private elementary schools. Tragically, students perform better academically in private schools than they do in public ones, where the majority of students are educated (Mensah, 1995). Numerous studies on the performance of students in private and public schools have been conducted. The Ministry of Education’s (M.O.E.) statistics back up the claims made by several education stakeholders regarding the performance gaps between private and public Junior High Schools (Wilkinson, 2010). For instance, Mills and Mereku (2016) examined students’ performance and discovered that students in private schools outperformed those in government basic schools. In his research, Alhassan (2016) also found that for the 2013 BECE cohort, students in Tamale Metropolis’ private schools outperformed those in public schools. The lower performance of students in public schools from 2008 to 2010 was also bemoaned by Okyerefo, Fiaveh, and Lamptey (2011). This appalling performance of public school students in comparison to private school students may be caused by the Ghanaian government’s focus on accessibility rather than quality (Ampiah, 2010). Due to this, some parents have chosen to enrol their children in private schools rather than public ones, where tuition is free as part of the Free Compulsory Universal Primary Basic Education (FCUBE) initiative.
Relevant literature identifies that the causes of low academic performance in schools are attributed to factors including teachers’ professional qualification and practice, teacher motivation, supervision, the availability of teaching and learning resources in schools, the use of instructional time, parental support of academic activities, etc. With the established determinants of academic performance and the disparity in academic performance between private and public schools, differences in the determinants of academic performance between private and public schools seem to be missing in literature. The current study, therefore, steps an address to establish the case with differences in the determinants between private and public basic schools. That is this study marks the differences in the factors that contribute to the observed differences in academic performance between private and public schools. The factors are established as the underpinning factors responsible for the lower academic performance of public schools. The question that is there any difference between private schools and public schools in terms of these factors? Addressing this novel question constitutes the focus of this study. The study so established the state of the determining factors identified in literature in the Effutu Municipality, and the differences in the scores of determinants for private and public schools. The Effutu Municipality was chosen for the study because the case of private schools outperforming public schools in terms of academic performance has been established by Mills and Mireku (2016), who found that 77% of private school students achieved proficiency as compared to only 28% of students from the public schools in a standard test.
2. Research Methodology
The study employed a quantitative approach with a cross-sectional survey design. The cross-survey design was adopted on the justification of the use of the quantitative approach. Creswell and Creswell (2018) have indicated that the survey design provides a quantitative description of trends, attitudes, or opinions of a population by studying a sample of that population.
The population of the study constituted all JHS teachers within the Effutu Municipality. According to the Effutu Municipal Assembly, there are 22 public junior high schools and 25 private junior high schools in the Effutu Municipal. This connotes an aggregate of 47 junior high schools in the Municipality. Forty (40) schools were sampled from the aggregate number of schools. The number 40 was determined after Krejcie and Morgan (1970) proposes that a sample of 40 is ideal for a population of this number. A sample size of 385 was set for the study using the Cochran formula (Cochran, 1954). Quota sampling technique was used to select the 385 junior high school teachers to observe the establishment of a representative sample of the population. In doing this, the schools were cast into two categories of private and public schools. Quotas based on the proportionate contribution of private and public schools to the aggregate number of 47 schools were used. In essence, 180 teachers were selected for the public school category, and 205 teachers were selected from the private school category.
The study used a questionnaire composed of Likert scale items developed by Wilkinson (2010). For convenience and easy recording of data, the questionnaire was conveyed in Microsoft forms. The link to the questionnaire was shared with respondent teachers to follow to access the questionnaire to respond. The observed responses were exported into SPSS version 23 for analysis.
The study assessed the teachers’ professional practice, schools’ academic resource endowment, instructional supervision, school time usage, teacher motivation, and parental support of school work. The differences between private and public schools were assessed based on these constructs. The items which measure the constructs were checked for internal consistency using Cronbach’s Alpha. It was revealed that there is internal consistency within the scales. Cronbach’s Alpha of 0.95, 0.85, 0.79, 0.81, 0.85, and 0.84, were found for teachers’ professional practice, schools’ academic resource endowment, instructional supervision, schools’ time usage, teacher motivation, and parental support of school work respectively.
A look at the distribution revealed that the distribution of scores in the dataset is not normally distributed. Using the Kolmogorov-Smirnov and the Shapiro-Wilk statistics, the study found significant statistics as shown in Table 1, which suggests the violation of the assumption of normality. The study so rejected to consider parametric statistics. So in analyzing the data, median scores were used for descriptive statistics and Mann-Whitney U test statistic was used to compare the categories of schools. All results have presented in tables.
3. Results and Discussion
The Mann-Whitney U test revealed a statistically significant difference between
aLilliefors Significance Correction. Source: Field data (2022).
private school teachers’ professional practice (Md = 4.0, N = 205) and public school teachers’ professional practice (Md = 3.875, N = 185). A U of 20,592 with a z-value of 1.967 and a p-value of 0.049 was established between teachers’ professional practice in private and public Junior High Schools. As shown in Table 3, a small effect size was however found for the differences in teachers’ professional practice. Although the study has found that there is good teacher professional practice in either type of school, the case found for teachers’ professional practice in the categories of schools identifies that the scores for teachers in private schools are higher than the scores found for teachers in public schools. This presents a surprising situation since teachers in public schools are most often trained in teacher education institutions whilst their counterparts in private schools are most often not trained in that regard. According to the Ghana Education Service [GES] (2016), both public and private schools had 71.1% trained teachers at the Junior High School level. Public junior high schools had 89.6% of specially trained teachers, compared to only 18.7% in private junior high schools. Ironically, students from private schools typically outperform those from public schools in the BECE over time. Since the study discovered that teachers in private schools perform better than those in public schools in terms of professional practice, the case identified in this study tends to explain this ironic scenario. The median scores observed for supervision and motivation in the context of private schools identify that supervision and motivation are higher than that found for public schools. The study concludes that these scenarios might account for the observed lag in the professional practice of teachers in public Junior High Schools. Teachers play an important role in the development of people as they help in the acquisition of a wide range of knowledge and skills that would be needed. This hints that teacher quality matters. Cavalluzzo (2004) in citing Rice (1987) viewed teacher quality as the most important school-related factor which determines student achievement. Fuller (1987) also found the effect of the quality of teaching experiences on academic achievement. On the background of these findings and the differences established between private school and public school teachers’ professional practice, the observed better performance of private schools in terms of student academic success, especially with the case found by Mills and Mireku (2016) in the Effutu Municipal is justified.
The effectiveness of a teacher’s teachings is influenced by the availability and utilization of teaching and learning resources. The innovative use of a range of media, per Broom (1973), enhances the likelihood that the student will learn more, retain what they learn better, and perform better on the competencies that they are meant to acquire. According to Ausubel (1973), even young infants are capable of learning abstract concepts if they are given enough resources and hands-on exposure to the phenomenon they are to learn. Referring to Table 2, the current study establishes that there is availability of academic-relevant resources in Junior High Schools in the Effutu Municipality. In spite of these establishments, the study has found that the median scores for academic resources
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Table 2. Median scores of academic performance determinants of private and public schools.
PB = Public Junior High School; PV = Private Junior High School; TP = Teachers’ professional practice; SR = Schools’ resource endowment; IS = Instructional supervision; ST = School time usage; TM = Teacher motivation; PS = Parental support. Source: Field data (2022).
endowment of private schools in the Effutu Municipality are higher than what has been found for the case of public Junior High Schools in the Municipality. The Mann-Whitney U test confirms a statistically significant difference between the academic resources endowment of private Junior High Schools (Md = 2, N = 205) and public Junior High Schools (Md = 1.83, N = 180), as a U = 23,044, a z-value = 4.335, and a p-value = 0.00 have been established. This is in congruence with the findings of Ankomah (2002) who marked that private schools in Cape Coast, Ghana, have a higher regard for the provision of teaching and learning resources than public schools. Opare (1999) argues in a study that compares the performance of public and private basic schools that having the necessary human and material resources is crucial for improving academic performance. According to Opare (1999), schools that had access to the resources they needed for teaching and learning performed better than those that lacked them. According to an empirical study by Adedeji and Owoeye (2002), there is a strong correlation between students’ academic achievement and their utilization of suggested textbooks. For any worthy educational endeavour to succeed, the authors state that “the availability of physical and material resources is vitally important” (p. 38). As the current study has found that academic resources which take the form of textbooks, library books, laboratories for practical academic work, illustration materials, student furniture, proper and adequate classrooms, as well as human resources are more available in private schools (SR = 2) than in public schools (SR = 1.83) in the Effutu Municipality, the situation of higher performing private schools is as well justified since these resources are required for academic lessons to be effective and lively. This shows that public Junior High Schools are in a way disadvantaged.
The behaviour of teachers in the classroom must be closely observed to provide effective instructional supervision. The provision of deliberate and organized supervision of the school is the most significant responsibility carried out by school administrators. The provision of materials and encouragement of formal and informal contacts that would positively and constructively impact the teaching, learning, and professional development of teachers is required of school supervisors. As shown in Table 3, a statistically significant difference (U = 22,756, z = 1.967, p = 0.00, r = 0.1) has been established in the instructional supervision between private Junior High Schools (Md = 3.22, N = 205) and public Junior High Schools (Md = 3.11, N = 180) in the Effutu Municipality. In a study of 60 schools from peri-urban (29 schools) and rural (31 schools) locations in Ghana, Etsey, Amedahe, and Edjah (2005) found that academic performance was better in private schools than in public schools, expressing the similarity of this finding in literature. The author found this to be the case because more effective supervision of work was identified for private Junior High Schools than for public Junior High Schools. This conforms to the position of Neagley and Evans (1970) that the calibre of classroom instruction and learning can be enhanced through effective supervision of instruction. The study so calls for effective supervision of schools’ instructional supervision by superiors of headteachers and circuit supervisors in the Municipality to observe proper supervision of instruction in Junior High Schools in the Effutu Municipality. The call for effective supervision is not expressed uniquely for public Junior High Schools since the median score observed for either school does not express that respondent teachers agree to the fact that there is effective supervision of instruction in the various schools. Halpin (1956) in appraising the leadership and behaviour of school superintendents noted that the availability of the appropriate teaching and learning resources that would support high achievement is required for supervision to be effective. On this background, the study expresses that the inadequacy in academic resources endowment for both private and public Junior High Schools as shown in Table 2 is expressive of the fact that respondent teachers could not establish whether there is effective supervision of instruction or not. The study proceeds to express that the burden of the load on the central manager of Basic Education in Ghana (the Ghana Education Service) and the
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Table 3. Mann-Whitney U test parameters of academic performance determinants of private and public schools.
Source: Field data (2022).
fact that educational service delivery by public Junior High Schools in Ghana is free may be the contributing factors to the limited ability of the Service to resource public Junior High Schools to par the state of private Junior High Schools. The case observed for private Junior High School management is local and funding is generated through school fees paid by parents and guardians. This makes resourcing and policy implementation direct and expedited, unlike the bureaucracy-laden situation with public Junior High Schools.
Time is unchangeable. No one has managed to slow down, halt, extend, or suspend time, as stated by Weldy (1974). According to Cambone (1994), instructional time is when a teacher uses the time, duration, and period appropriately, as indicated on the timetable for a particular subject, in an interactive setting with students on pertinent issues that would enhance teaching and learning, and following a lesson plan. Implicitly, effective use of instructional time should include both the lessons that were taught and learned during that time as well as the teacher’s actual physical presence in the classroom with the students as scheduled. Throughout the school day, there are many instances where time is wasted. In response, Lockheed and Verspoor (1991) found that the time wasted as a result of unexpected school closures, teacher absences, and disruptions were significantly higher in developing countries than in industrialized nations. A research on the management of instructional time in a few chosen Ghanaian public primary schools by Koomson, Acheampong, and Fobih (1999) attested to Lockheed and Verspoor’s (1991) claim. In the classes they observed, 55% of the total instructional time was spent on actual instruction, they found. It indicated that 45% of the entire instructional time was lost. The Mann-Whitney U test revealed that there is no statistically significant difference between private Junior High Schools (Md = 3.2, N = 205) and public Junior High Schools (Md = 3.2, N = 180) in the Effutu Municipality in terms of school time usage. As shown in Table 3, a U of 19,565, with a p-value of 0.296 and a z-value of 0.296, has been found for the case of school time usage difference. An effect size of 0.05, suggesting a very small effect (Cohen, 1988), has been established to support the case. This is to express that, either school type, whether private or public indeed has the same duration of time to convey the delivery of academic-relevant business. In essence, the usage of school time in private Junior High Schools does not deviate from the usage of school hours in public Junior High schools. This finding congruously reflects the findings of Lockheed and Jimenez (1994) who established that official instructional time is relatively similar for public and private schools. According to the authors, both types of schools reported having a school year of approximately 200 days, a school day of seven or eight periods, and periods lasting about 50 minutes. Despite this, the researchers reiterated that public schools were closed for nearly four times as many school days (fifteen) as private schools (four), unlike this study which found the same median scores regarding time usage by both schools.
In their study on teacher motivation in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, Bennell and Akyeampong (2007) found that many primary school teachers in Ghana have low levels of job satisfaction and are consequently not motivated. As a result, tens of millions of kids are not getting the education they need (Bennell & Akyeampong, 2007). The authors continued by stating that many teachers’ living and working conditions were subpar, which affected their motivation and self-esteem. According to Lockheed and Verspoor (1991), a lack of professional dedication and motivation results in poor attendance and disrespectful behaviour toward students, both of which have an impact on student’s academic achievement. Among the factors studied in this research, teacher motivation observed the highest degree of differences between private Junior High Schools and public Junior High Schools. As shown in Table 2, the median scores found for teacher motivation identify that teacher motivation is higher in private Junior High Schools (Md = 4.125, N = 205) than in public Junior High Schools (Md = 3.75, N = 180). A statistically significant difference has been established for the case as a U of 26531 with a p-value of 0.00 and a z-value of 7.438 are found. An effect size of 0.38, connoting a moderate effect according to Cohen (1988) supports this difference in teacher motivation between private and public Junior High Schools. Observing to be consistent with this finding, Bennell and Akyeampong (2007), it is well known that teachers in private schools were typically more motivated than their counterparts in public schools. A person who is highly motivated gives their job their all. Motivation and job satisfaction are influenced by various factors. Bennell and Akyeampong (2007) came to this conclusion in the context of private schools based on higher pay, better working and living conditions, and more competent management. As presented earlier in the discussion of teachers’ professional practice, the lower scores for the practice of the profession by public school teachers is justified by the fact that public Junior High School teachers are demotivated and hence do not practice the profession to reflect the training they received in the various teacher education institutions, which consequently reflects the poorer performance of public Junior High Schools in the Basic Education Certificate Examination.
Reviews of family engagement in children’s education and, consequently, research on parental support show that, on average, children with more involved families had greater academic success levels than children with less involved families (Jeynes, 2005a, 2005b, 2005c). Therefore, it has been demonstrated that one crucial factor that favourably affects students’ education is parental involvement in their children’s education. Strong parental involvement in their children’s education has also been shown by Goodwin and King (2002) to be crucial for academic achievement. Children are taught that education is vital when parents are participating, according to Davis and Karr-Kidwell (2003). According to one definition, parental engagement is “the parent’s role in educating their children at home and in school” (Deslandes & Bertrand, 2005: p. 164). The issue of differences in parental support of wards’ academics observed that parents who enrol their wards in private schools are more supportive of ward’s academics (Md = 4.0, N = 205) than parents who enrol their wards in public Junior High Schools (Md = 3.86, N = 180). A statistically significant difference has been established as well for parental support of wards’ academics between private and public Junior High Schools, as a U of 22908.5 with a p-value of 0.00 and a z-value of 4.104 are found. Observing a somewhat moderate effect for the difference in parental support between private and public Junior High Schools, an effect size of 0.21 supports the case. In a study which compared the academic performance of day and boarding students, Opare (1981) discovered that the majority of the top performers came from houses with better socioeconomic status. According to Opare (1981), “pupils in the private basic schools were stronger intellectually than their counterparts in the public school system since the former’s background is middle class” (p. 9). In a similar vein, Panda (1982) reaffirmed that student progress is influenced by family circumstances, particularly parental support. According to Dave (1988), students who do not get enough time to read due to family activities and social surroundings obtain very poor outcomes in school tests. The fact that parents of pupils have to pay fees to enrol their wards in private Junior High Schools while like-educational service is freely offered in public Junior High Schools is expressive of the fact that they support their wards’ education in financial terms more than parents who pay nothing or less. Finding this difference between private and public Junior High Schools as well justifies why pupils from private Junior High Schools outperform their counterparts from public Junior High Schools.
4. Conclusion and Recommendations
The objective of the paper was to establish the nature of variations in the determinants of academic performance for public and private schools in the Effutu Municipality of Ghana. The study was worth the attention of research because a previous study had established that private school students in the Effutu Municipality outperformed their public school counterparts in a standard test. The general narrative of the comparison of public and private schools identifies that public schools are usually subpar in terms of academic performance. The study justifies the relatively lower performance of the public schools as that the determinants of academic performance are significantly higher in the case of private schools in the Effutu Municipality.
The study so based on the findings and what has been established in literature on the issue to recommend that there should be a conscious effort to consider the quality of students in public schools. In order to agree with the Sustainable Development Goal 4 which targets education, and that to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all, it is recommended that the Ministry of Education with the Ghana Education Service should prioritize revenue mobilization which targets public schools resourcing and even building of more new schools. Also, the study recommends efforts to eliminate all forms of compromises on instructional monitoring in public schools. Monitoring and strict supervision of instructional supervision should be enacted and relevant regular reporting to authority should be upheld in public schools. Where necessary, circuit supervisors should be provided with suitable means of transport to enable them to access remote areas to monitor school work. Parents who enroll their wards in public schools are advised to be more supportive towards their wards’ education to achieve better academic performances. Lastly, the study recommends mapping out plans to boost-motivate public school teachers, where all forms of teacher demotivating factors are limited or eliminated.
As a limitation, the study looked at the case from the perspective of Junior High School teachers in the Municipality. This limited the study as a triangulation from the side of headteachers and students could be considered to give a bigger picture to the study. The current study proposes that future studies should consider headteachers and students’ perspectives to the problem.