Keywords (Extracted from title, table of contents and
abstract of thesis)
Indispensable, Inevitable, Deterioration, Private, Secondary, Comparative,
Quality, District, Questionnaires, Percentage, Encouraged, Factors |
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Abstract
The quality
education is an indispensable and inevitable agent for change as
education is a process of civilization and development. The issue of
deterioration of quality in education in Pakistan, especially
decline in quality of secondary education was the slogan of the day.
The major purpose of the research was to compare the quality of
education in public and private schools of Punjab. All the secondary
schools, their heads, secondary school teachers and students of 10th
class of public and private sector of the Punjab constituted
population of the study. Punjab is generally distributed in three
different stratus, which are North Punjab, Central Punjab, and South
Punjab.Due to limited time and resources, the study was delimited to
the nine districts of Punjab namely Rawalpindi, Chakwal, Attock,
Lahore, Gujranwala, Dera Ghazi Khan, Bahawalpur, Mianwali and
Sargodha. Two hundred and sixteen secondary schools (twenty-four
secondary schools from each sample district) were randomly selected.
The proportion of public sector schools and private sector schools,
boys and girls schools was equal. All the heads of selected 24
secondary schools of public and private sector from each district
(the proportion of public sector schools and private sector schools,
boys and girls schools was equal i.e. fifty fifty) were included in
sample. One thousand and eighty teachers (one hundred and twenty
from each sample district) constituted the sample of the study. The
proportion of the public and private, male and female teachers was
fifty fifty. Four thousand, three hundred and twenty students
studying in 10th class in public and private high schools of already
sampled district of Punjab were randomly selected as the sample of
the study. The proportion of public and private and male and female
students was fifty fifty. Three questionnaires, one each for heads,
secondary school teachers and students, prepared and validated
through pilot-testing, were used as the research instruments of the
study. The researcher visited the target areas personally,
distributed the questionnaires himself, and got filled
questionnaires back from respondents. The data obtained was
tabulated and analyzed by using simple percentage and two way chi
square tests. Main conclusions of the study were: that private
sector schools had actually less number of students and teachers at
secondary level as compared to public sector schools. The results of
10th class students in boards’ examinations of private schools were
better than government schools. While with respect to ownership of
building, almost 98% public sector schools had their own buildings
and majority of private schools was running in rented buildings. In
public sector schools student-teacher ratio was higher than private
schools. Heads of private sector secondary schools were better than
heads of public sector secondary schools regarding involvement of
subordinate staff in decision making, keeping themselves as a part
of team while leading them and carrying out the well- organized
tasks. But the heads of public sector secondary schools were more
qualified academically as well as professionally, having more
administrative experience as compared to private sector secondary
schools’ heads. Teachers of public secondary schools were more
qualified academically as well as professionally having command over
teaching methodology as compared to the teachers of private
secondary schools. In public schools, in service training was
provided to teachers and their selection was done on merit. They had
also job security and their pay structure was well. In contrast,
private sector was lacking these factors.Behaviour of teachers of
private schools was motivating and they encouraged questioning and
enhanced creativity among students, whereas public schools were
lacking these factors.Availability of A.V. aids was excessive in
public secondary schools as compared to private secondary schools
but their use was more in private public secondary schools. Position
of physical facilities was better in public secondary schools than
in private secondary schools with respect to buildings, libraries,
play grounds, furniture. While position of private sector secondary
schools was better in availability of computer labs and gas.
Respondents of both the systems were of the view that curriculum of
both type of systems was not up-to-date, fulfilling emerging needs
of neither society nor it was being revised regularly.
The major recommendations are: more schools be established in public
sector. School mapping be kept in mind before establishing new
schools. The heads and teachers of school should take such necessary
actions which may help to raise academic standard of their school.
The heads of public schools should take seriously the problem of
their low pass percentage. Teachers of public schools may be held
accountable on showing poor result in examination. They must be
given incentives for showing good results. Teachers of both systems
be given opportunities to get training in order to improve their
teaching skills.Libraries of public and private schools be kept
well-maintained and all necessary treasure of books be present in
them and students and teachers should be allowed to get benefit from
library. Teachers should make more use of A.V. aids to make teaching
process more effective.
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