Extent of Parental School Involvement for Improved Pupils’ Academic Performance in Anambra State

Abstract

This paper examined the extent of parental school involvement for improved pupils’ academic performance in Anambra State. Four research questions guided the study. The population of this study comprised all 2519 primary five teachers in 187 primary schools in Awka-North, Awka-South, Anoacha, Dunukofia and Njikoka LGEAs. The sample size for the study comprised 172 primary five class teachers. The multi-stage sampling technique was employed in this study. At the first stage, 15% of the schools were sampled randomly from each LGEAs, making a total of 28 primary schools selected. At the second stage, all the primary five teachers in the sampled schools totaling 172 primary five class teachers formed the sample of the study. A structured questionnaire titled “Teachers’ Response on Parental School Involvement (TRPSI) containing 33 items built on four clusters of B1 – B4. The instrument is structured on a four-point scale of VGE- Very Great Extent, GE- Great Extent, LE- Low Extent, VLE- Very Low Extent with nominal value of 4, 3, 2, and 1 respectively. The instrument was subjected to validation report by three experts. The Cronbach Alpha method was used to analyze the data to ascertain the internal consistency of the instrument and it yielded values of 0.84, 0.80, 0.87 and 0.78 respectively. Mean and standard deviation was used to answer the research questions posed in this study. The finding revealed that teachers rated to a great extent parental involvement in; child’s home-school communication; school volunteering; child’s home learning and school decision-making for improved pupils’ performance. It was recommended amongst others that parents and guardians should create a good communication language style that will foster close interaction between the parents and the child as well as the parents and the school.