School policies and their effects on student performance
Welcome to our weekly blog for Teacher Tapp Ghana
Every Monday we summarize our most surprising and interesting survey findings from the week before. This weekly blog provides an easy way for you to learn about the experiences and opinions of teachers across Ghana.
Please encourage your colleagues to use the Teacher Tapp app to keep engaged with education even when they’re not teaching. Your responses are also a vital data source that will guide decision-making around best policies and approaches for enhancing the welfare of educators/teachers and ensuring robust educational sector management.
Many more teachers will like to be heard and this can be done through Teacher Tapp. Do share this blog with your colleagues and encourage them to use the download links at the bottom of the page. In the meantime, here are this week’s intriguing findings…
- School policies should be reformed to suit the modern age of society today
The world is changing, and fast! This is seen in many facets of our lives and especially in the educational space. Over the week, a lot of debates were sparked over some school policies that many defined as archaic and to an extent, irrelevant. The debates were centered on the need for schools to review some of their policies to suit the modern trends today. This week, we sought to find out from our users their stance on this assertion that was amplified over the week. 64% of our users agreed that some school policies should be reviewed, for instance, the policy of cutting one’s hair, because they had served out the purpose and were no longer relevant in today’s society while 16% indicated otherwise. It is important for every society to adapt to the dynamic changes of the world but it is best if the adaptation is done according to the strengths of the society in question. In view of this, we will urge all stakeholders in this matter to carefully and meticulously review and evaluate the pros and cons of such matters before final decisions are made.
- There are still mixed feelings about the public school’s advantage when it comes to school placements
A few years back, the Ghana Education Service rolled out a policy to allocate 30% placement of Grade ‘A’ schools to public schools before the remaining 70% is allocated to all basic schools in the country after the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE). This initiative was implemented to reserve a slot for students who were in the catchment area of local schools. It was also to serve as a motivation to students in the public schools to up their academic performance. However, there have been some concerns regarding this policy and many people have expressed their diverse opinions concerning the matter. This week, we sought to find out what our users thought of the policy. Per our survey, it was discovered that people had mixed feelings over the policy. 41% of our users indicated that the policy should be reviewed while another 41% indicated that it be maintained. The topic has resurfaced recently, and we are poised to find out the outcome that will be yielded from deliberations over the subject matter.
- A school’s discipline and academic is pivotal in student’s academic performance
The academic performance of a student is dependent on many factors and one of such factors is the discipline and academic regime of the school. Over the week, in the wake of the Achimota school incident, some Ghanaians opined that the academic performance of a child had nothing or little to do with the school’s set standards in terms of discipline and academic expectations. In light of this, we conducted a survey to find out how true or otherwise people thought of the statement. Per our response, 64% of our respondents indicated that a school’s disciplinary and academic standards played a major role in shaping up the academic performance of students. It, therefore, can not be denied that school policies and standards aren’t just set as a traditional requirement but to help in bringing out the best in the students as well.
Great content Ethel!
Having read the article, I couldn’t agree less with the points raised.
Despite the general response from your surveys, I think it’s very important we agree that:
1. National & School policies are great factors that really have a bearing on Academic Performance of students. For example, students performance is gradually declining in the Basic Education Certificate Examination. My current discussion with a few final year students of mine showed that their ‘secured’ placement in a Senior High Schools under the Free SHS initiative has really left them ‘unworried’ to put in the need efforts to strive for extinction.
2. The policies enacted by School Management Committees(SMCs) go a long way to affect the general learning environment of schools. A suitable learning environment has been/ and continues to be a great influence and motivation for any learner, whether young or old to give their best and sustain their interest in learning and ultimately improve their performance: academically or otherwise.
3. On the issue of haircuts as an example to suggest that schools take a look at their policies, I think whatever a School Management Committee or leadership decides to implement in their school as a measure to standout in their education delivery must be respected and placed Paramount. Anyone who wishes to enroll in any of such schools should be privy to the values, norms and regulations -if these basics do not appeal to one’s own values and beliefs, why associate or develop interest in that institution?
I look forward to reading other articles in the coming days.
Why didn’t I see these articles earlier? I love them!