Role Of Parental Involvement In Students’ Academic Engagement At Primary Schools Of Nekemte City

Abstract

In education, parents’ engagement in schooling and management is emerging as a “best practice” thought necessary to achieve universal primary enrolment while improving the quality and relevance of teaching and learning. In the context of global movements such as Education for all (EFA) that aims to ensure that all children have access to free quality primary education by 2015. Low-income countries are under increasing international and domestic pressure to meet these goals. The objective of this study was to investigate the role of parents’ involvement in students’ academic engagement in primary schools of Nekemte City. Descriptive research design was used in this study. The study used mixed approach in which both quantitative and qualitative research methods were adopted. This approach was selected as it is used to generate rich data from multiple sources. Out of total respondents 145 (43.02%) are teachers and 192 (57%) are students. Similarly, out of the total of 337 respondents females make up 43.92 percent, which is close to males but less. Regarding the age structure, the majority of teachers (58 percentages) age category is less than 40 years. Teachers and parents poorly established close relations in support of children’s academic welfare (M=2.18, SD=0.53) and most parents were not provide their children with academic support both at home and school (M=1.69, SD=0.58). However, respondents indicated that parents were actively involved themselves in availing educational materials to their children with mean values of 3.69 and standard deviation of 0.46. The statistical t-test also signifies above analysis. Thus, whether teachers and students view differ on the parental involvement in school matters, t-test was computed that the null hypothesis says there is no difference between their views at 95% confidence interval. The result (t-test = 9.78, df =335, p = .00) showed there was statistically significant difference, between the teachers and students view with respect to parental involvement. This study indicated that there were low levels of parental involvement in school communication concerning school matters. It was recommended that parental assistance to their children was the only step we can take to reduce the difference in academic performance between primary school students who received parental support from students who completely did not receive it.