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COMPARATİVE ANALYSİS OF PUBLİC AND PRİVATE SCHOOLS İN THE PERSPECTİVE OF QUALİTY EDUCATİON |
International Journal of Policy Studies
International Journal of Policy Studies

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Volume

1

Issue

1

Year

2021

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1682060069195_3103

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INTRODUCTION

Secondary school education is the middle tier of the education system and plays a significant role. Whereas the quality of this layer is deteriorating, this needs special attention at multiple levels. Therefore, it is important to deliver quality education at the secondary school level because quality is crucial for prosperity, survival, and moving along with the fast-changing world. However, Pakistan's education system faces critical challenges in the context of quality provision (Awan, 2020). Especially the quality provision at the secondary school level is especially portrayed as a failure; that's why Pakistan is ranked lower in many international assessments index in terms of quality education (Aziz, 2014). There are multifarious causes that impact the provision of quality education, such as increased student-teacher ratio, lack of facilities, administration ineffectiveness, lack of curriculum upgrading, improper faculty training, and lack of career guidance (McGreal, 2017). Therefore, the ineffectiveness of public sector schools provides an advantage to private sector schools to turn education-centric institutions into business models.

In the past, Pakistan's education system was overseen by the ministry of education, which was decentralized from the federal to provincial level after the devolution plan 2000 (Plan, 2000). Article 25-A of the constitution of Pakistan mentioned that States are accountable for providing compulsory and free quality education ranging from five years old to eighteen years old age group citizens. However, the whole education system is categorized into six levels such as preschool, Primary comprises of grades one to five, Middle comprises of grades six to eight, Secondary education consists of grades ninth and tenth, Intermediate from eleventh and twelfth grade, and the last one is university level that covers both undergraduate and graduates' degrees.

According to the Pakistan census data of 2017, 58 percent is the literacy rate, while the female literacy rate is 48 percent, and the male literacy rate is 70 percent (Wazir, 2017). In tribal and rural areas, the literacy rate is meager compared to the urban areas. However, Pakistan's literacy rate is still one of the lowest literate countries globally. Pakistan is among the largest countries in the perspective of the out-of-school population. The reasons for such low-quality education and lowest performance are traced back to the British colonial period because the educational progress of the British government was limited to such areas, which later became part of India. That's why the regions that emerged as Pakistan are highly backward with the highest illiterate population. Moreover, the rural areas were highly poor in terms of quality education as compared to urban areas. (Amir, 2020).

The education status of the past leans the government towards establishing educational infrastructure development and quantity instead of quality. The national education conference (1947) initially started with the universalization of primary education that aims to achieve this within twenty years (Dildar, 2016). It also sets a basic foundation for future education development (Parveen, 2011). Additionally, governments invest a lot of resources to build new educational infrastructure and educational projects. However, the government still does not achieve its objectives both in terms of quality and quantity. As a result, Pakistan is still listed among the most illiterate states around the world.

Pakistan's education policy was traced back to its first educational conference held on December 1st, 1947, under the Quaid-e-Azam's supervision. The conference provides a complete sketch of educational development for the country in a broad perspective for the future. Moreover, it formed a primary and secondary education committee to recommend their valuable suggestion to improve quality education at the secondary school level. This policy was not entirely implemented because of various problems and issues; that's why the country continued the British colonial education system bitterly (Majoka, 2017). Furthermore, the education policy of 1959, the new education policy of Pakistan in 1970, the National education policy of 1972, the Education policy of 1979, and the national education policy of 1992 all was failed and not implemented in their real essence due to the new state's problems, lack of resources, political instabilities, east Pakistan separation, lack of proper implementation and a transaction among military and democratic governments (Khushik, 2018). However, all these policies give proper attention to the improvement of secondary school education by focusing on the aspects of the organization, curriculum, purpose, duration of the level, examination, evaluation, and teachers' training (Chakraborty, 2018). 

The education policy of 1998-2010 was formulated and implemented within the country that follows the objectives and aims of previous policies (Ahmed, 2014). However, the national education policy 2017 was designed with the efforts of the government to upgrade the education policy with a key focus on economic, social, and moral values development to ensure national unity. The education policy 2017 incorporated new objectives such as promoting non-formal education, public-private partnerships, facilitating private sector, distance and online learning, quality reforms, ensuring the influential role of Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET). Moreover, at the tertiary level in the non-formal middle-level schools, technical and vocational education are introduced along with Research and Development (R&D) (Shahzad, 2018). These policies give significant importance to the secondary school level and make it free and compulsory for all. Moreover, it introduces more programs and policy actions for secondary schools, such as student-centered pedagogies, life skills-based education, national merit program, community service programs, and many more (Basham, 2011). 

The educational structure of Pakistan is composed of different educational institutions such as federal institutions, government institutions, cadet schools and colleges, Private and non-elite English medium schools, local bodies institutions, garrison institutions, public sector institutions, missionary schools, and Madrassahs, and missionary schools. Therefore, at the secondary school level, the curriculum formulation and development responsibility are taken by various institutions such as curriculum research, examining boards, development centers, training institutions, education extensions centers, textbook boards, and the NBCT in cooperation with educational departments. The Government College for Elementary Teachers (GCETs) and provincial Education Extension Centres (EECs) are responsible for the training and development of teachers. Moreover, the Academy of Educational Planning and Management (AEPM), National Academy of Higher Education (NAHE), and secondary teacher education program (STEP) are also working on in-service teachers' training and development programs.

Pakistan Education administrative organization is arranged in a hierarchical order by each province, which is mentioned in figure 1. Therefore, at the secondary school level, the annual examination system is taken by the Boards of Intermediate and Secondary Education (BISEs); each province has its own BISEs within major districts, for example, the Rawalpindi Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education. These boards are overseen and controlled by a single provincial board of education. The study's objective is to analyze and identify the role of different factors in providing quality education at the secondary school level.

 

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE: THEORETICAL FOUNDATION OF EDUCATION

Behaviourism theory (John Watson, 1913) is considered a learning theory that was initiated by John Watson (1878-1958) and Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936). This theory is based on the principle of stimulus-response, which believes that behaviors are generated through external stimuli (García-Penagos, 2013). External stimuli include environmental stimuli; for example, the school factors and observable environmental stimuli influence the learners' behavior in a learning environment. It states that learners are practically passive and respond to environmental or external stimuli. The behaviorism theory does not encounter the consciousness or internal mental state while defining the behaviors of individuals. The positive and negative external reinforcement influences the individuals' behaviors. Therefore, in connection with the learning environment, the theory states that quality education is defined through changes in learners' behaviors through environmental stimuli (Harasim, 2017).

A report published by the organization for cooperation and development (OECD) with the assistance of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) with the name of "school factors related to quality and equity: results from PISA 2000", that study the quality and equity in terms of educational outcomes (Luyten, 2005). This report's key objective is to examine different factors that impact the equity and quality of educational outcomes. The equity and quality of students' performance are linked with different school factors that are considered indicators of quality education, such as student-teacher ratio, faculty, curriculum, faculty training, career guidance, administration, extra curriculum support, and so (Thomas, 2004). The findings of the study state that the socio-economic composition of school factors plays an essential role in education quality and student performance (Iqbal, 2018). These physical factors of schools are positively correlated with education quality. This research study also mentioned that private schools' quality performance is better than public schools due to effective faculty and administration Control (Gbenu, 2012).

Javed (2015) conducted a study about the "causes of deterioration of quality in secondary education in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Pakistan." The study was conducted in six districts of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) province of Pakistan. The study is descriptive in nature with an objective to identify and analyze the reasons for the deterioration of education quality along with highlighting the indicators of quality education at the secondary school level in KPK province. The study highlighted some factors as pillars of quality education because of their significant role in quality education, such as outstanding teaching faculty, sound mechanism of supervision and monitoring, challenging and well-balanced curriculum, effective stock at libraries, and many more (Vnouckova, 2017). The findings stated that various factors lead to the deterioration of quality education, such as lack of an adequate system for supervision and monitoring, lack of qualified teachers and staff, political interference, lack of instructional facilities, overcrowded classrooms, lack of qualified faculty, and many more (Nadeem, 2020).

 

RESEARCH DESIGN

For the conduction of research, the relevant literature is reviewed. Eight quality indicators are extracted for this study: literacy, student-teacher ratio, curriculum, faculty, career guidance, extra-curriculum support, faculty training, and administration. Moreover, the paper separately analyzes the responses of public schools and private schools to make a comparison. The study is explanatory in nature that uses a mixed-method approach and survey method with an open-ended questionnaire designed for the data collection process.

The study is limited to the Rawalpindi tehsil of the Rawalpindi district of Punjab Province of Pakistan. Punjab public schools and average private status schools are selected as a population of study that is registered with BISE Rawalpindi. The survey questionnaire was sent to fifty participants through a google form, and only thirty-six respondents submitted their responses. Purposive Quota sampling was used as a type of non-probability sampling technique (Yadav, 2019). The comparative analysis has to observe to what extent these are incorporated within public and private schools. However, the study is limited to government institutions and non-elite English medium schools. The secondary level of education is selected to narrow down the focus of this research study; the secondary level of education comprises grades 9th and 10th. The questionnaire was designed according to the quality indicators extracted from the available literature review. The study is only limited to eight indicators: literacy, student-teacher ratio, curriculum, faculty, career guidance, extra-curricular support, faculty training, and administration. Here literacy is taken as the ability to write, read, and make a signature, and administration means the school administration that covers the supervision of the principal and clerical staff. It is considered that these selected indicators act as pillars of quality education. The collected data is further analyzed with the help of using SPSS software. The correlation analysis and cross-tabulation tools are used to analyze the data (Miller, 2017).

 

ANALYSIS AND RESULT

CORRELATION ANALYSIS

The linear correlation is analyzed through the Pearson correlation for this research paper. The Pearson correlation analysis measures the association between variables in the context of their strength of association and the direction of the association. The values close to 1 indicate a close relationship with quality education, and values close to 0 highlights no linear relationship (Schober, 2018).

The coefficient of correlation is measured for the indicators of quality education in figure 2 to predict their strength of association and direction with the quality education variable. The correlation findings show that all quality education indicators are significant at the 0.01 level and positively correlate with quality education. The faculty, curriculum, career guidance, and training of faculty have a strong relationship with the quality education based on their r values, which are respectively .831 (83%), .812 (81%), .724 (72%), and .708 (70%). Therefore, administration (.642) (64%) student-teacher ratio (.591) (59%), and extra-curriculum support (.576) (57%) reflect a middling relation with quality education. However, literacy (.437) (44%) indicates a weak association with quality education.

 

ANALYSIS WITH GRAPHICAL REPRESENTATION

Here in this section, all the respondents' responses are explained through graphical representation. These graphs compare the responses of both public and private sectors separately to reflect on their quality of education. Starting from figure 3, which reflects that students are learning every day, both in the public and private sectors. The following graph (figure 4) shows a similar trend in both public and private schools in the context of gaining more knowledge than in the previous year.

As per the statistics of World ( (Bank, 2021), the pupil-teacher ratio is 44 at the national level. Interestingly, the upcoming figure 5 highlights that students are satisfied with their school's student-teacher ratio in public and private schools, while figure 6 highlights that both public and private schools effectively manage their student-teacher ratio. Another relevant factor (figure 7) reflects differences in results related to the student-teacher ratio—however, most schools (both public and private) have 40 or 60 students per teacher. Although most private schools show a ratio of 20 students per teacher. The ratio of student teacher ration in private sector is better as compared to public schools and becoming worse in case of public schools as compared to study of world bank.

Teaching quality can be enhanced with the better undrstaing and intererst of studnets in the curriculum. This also helps the students in achieving the objective of enrollement in the schools (KPU, 2021). Therefore, the illustration of figure 8 assesses that either both public and private school students are satisfied with their curriculum or not. However, the variation of responses shows that some students are not sure about it, especially in private schools. The graphical representation of figure 9 shows that most students in private schools feel that the curriculum is according to their mental understanding. However, in public schools, most students are neutral about it. Therefore, many of them also believe that it is according to their mental understanding.

Figure 10 responses are gainst the question "The curriculum is at what level of your understanding or mental capabilities." Therefore, the responses are highly diversified in both columns. The majority of students in public schools think that the curriculum is according to their understanding level. Therefore, most students thought that the curriculum was above and according to their level of understanding in the private school. The results shows that, the students at public schools are more satifiied as compared to private schools. The understading of the students with curriculum helps the faculty to follow and implement the same more effectively.

The responses (in figure 11) to the question "Teachers follow the curriculum strictly" show similar responses in both schools. The majority of students of both schools thought that teachers followed the curriculum. Moreover, it has been reflected in figure 12 that most students of both schools agree that their teachers provide a course outline at the beginning of their course. Both public and private schools' responses show that students are satisfied with their faculty. However, a few numbers of responses also highlight that they are less and not satisfied both in public and private schools (figure 13).

Interestingly, there are a variety of responses, as mentioned by both public and private schools. However, the majority of students in private schools think that the faculty is enough for them. However, some are against the stance. Most students agree that faculty is enough for them in public schools, but many don't about it (figure 14). It is reality that, many public sector educational institutions lacks required man power. As per government of Punjab statistics, more than 33,000 seats are vacant in Punjab in educational sector (Punjab, 2021).

In figure 15, the colorful illustration shows variation in responses. The private schools' majority of students agree that their faculty is qualified enough, along with few responses that highlight the lack of required qualifications and no idea about faculty qualification. However, students of public schools have no idea about their qualifications, and many respondents also responded that the faculty is qualified enough. Students view about the faculty qualification depends upon the level of information they have concerning their teachers. As per our questionare most of the students responded positively in this case.

A colorful illustration (figure 16) highlights that most public and private schools organize meetings on a monthly basis. However, there are also a few respondents that share different experiences of parent-teacher meetings. In contrast, in figure 17, the students' responses show that both public and private students agree with the stance, "Is your school administration being competent in managing the quality of education at the secondary level?"

The colorful responses to the upcoming question (figure 18) highlight a greater variety of responses against the stance. Most public schools are not good at providing the facility for the help desk. However, most private schools have the facility of a help desk. Further, the majority of schools (both public and private) uses a whiteboard for delivering lectures (Figure 19). Moreover, The availability of large hall in public and private schools vary, which is evident in figure 20. However, most schools have one to three halls within their schools.

The library facility is available in both public and private schools (figure 21). Therefore, the results state that there are also some schools in both sectors that lack library facilities. In contrast, the dispensary facility is lacking in most public and private schools (figure 22). Although, few public and private schools have dispensary facilities. Succeeding in the career guidance facility highlights a different story in the public and private sectors. The responses reflect that most private schools have the facility of career guidance, but most public and private schools lack the facility of career guidance (figure 23). Although, in both sectors, students believe that they need career guidance at the secondary school level (figure 24). So, schools must work on this to assist their students in providing them the facility of career guidance at the secondary school level.

Interestingly, figure 25 reflects the similarity of responses by both sectors against the stance "Career guidance is a characteristic of quality education?". Both schools' students agree that career guidance is a characteristic of quality education. Figure 26 reflects the availability of study fairs for passing out students in schools at the secondary school level. The responses highlight that most schools provide this facility, but still, many schools lack this facility.

Likewise, figure 27 reflects the availability of extra curriculum support for students within schools. The responses illustrate that the facility is not commonly available in both public and private schools. To further analyze the desires aspect of the study, figure 28 shows a similarity of responses against the stance. The majority of public and private school students believe that extra curriculum support helps in getting a quality education. In the last, figure 29 shows a difference in responses of both public and private schools. The public schools highlight that the majority of schools' faculty is equipped with modern educational norms. However, there are many schools whose faculty is not equipped.

 

Conclusion and Policy Recommendations

From the perspective of quality of education, there is a strong relationship between various quality indicators. After the detailed descriptive and analytical analysis, it's been observed that there is a strong positive correlation between the parameters of educational standards, literacy rate, curricular and extra-curricular activities, faculty up-gradation programs (training and development of faculty), and administrative factors. However, some indicators are critical in terms of policy, standards regulatory actions.

Therefore, faculty training programs and career development programs for students are of utmost importance. At the same time, the educational administration, student-teacher ratio, and extra-curricular activities play a middling role in the regulation of educational quality. It is not better in government schools and students are not satisfied. This effects the quality of education in public sector institutes.  

Moreover, the descriptive display of the results shows cross-tabulation analysis that highlights the inculcation and initiation of quality enhancement standards in all public and private institutions, which is lacking most significantly. The analysis also reflects indicators on comparative grounds between public and private educational institutes. However, the important thing is that these indicators equally contribute to the quality education of both public and private schools at the secondary school level, comprised of 9th and 10th grades. Therefore there is a need to analyze the quality assessment procedures and standards at the secondary level of education.

Based on the research study's findings, this research study will recommend some important points to the government, policy-makers, school administration, and relevant stakeholders. These points are the following:

  • With the collaboration of relevant stakeholders, the government should set quality benchmarks or standards for measuring quality education at the secondary school level.
  • It is quite difficult to measure quality education at the secondary school level in the absence of quality education pre-defined standards or benchmarks. Initially stakeholder consulations with both sectors can help to devise a comprehensive plan.
  • Public and Private sector lacks joint initiatives. Some collaboarative activities can help in getting the lessons learn from eachother 
  • The government should align the curriculum, faculty qualification, and training of faculty according to the needs of the society and trending norms of international markets.
  • Governent Institutions needs to work on student teacher ration. It is perception and hence revealed in our study that student teacher ration in government institutions is not better and needs serious policy intenvetions.
  • It is important to update the curriculum and provide regular training to the faculty to provide quality education.
  • It is very crucial to provide the facility for career guidance and study fairs at the secondary school level.

This level of education influences the whole educational journey and decides the future study choices of a student. So the emphasis on quality governance of education sector is very significant.

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