Abstract:
The purpose of the study was to assess parental support on early childhood learners’
education in Ahafo Ano North Municipality. Specifically, the study sought to find out
the various types of support given by parents in Ahafo Ano North Municipality,
assess the impact of parental support on learners’ academic performance and examine
the challenges facing parents so far as early childhood education is concerned. The
study was nested into the mixed methods research design involving the quantitative
and qualitative approaches. The sample size was 20 parents, 4 early childhood
teachers, 2 head teachers, and 15 learners. A self-developed questionnaire was used
for the data collection. Pilot-testing of the instrument was done and reliability and
validity were ensured. Ethical consideration was also ensured before the actual data
collection. The data collected were analysed using descriptive statistics (frequencies
and percentages, means and standard deviations). The study found that generally,
most of the parents in the Ahafo Ano North Municipality do not really provide the
needed support for their children. Again, it was found that most of the support from
parents in the Ahafo Ano North Municipality do not really have much impact on the
learners’ academic performance. Finally, it was found that there are some challenges
facing parents so far as early childhood education management and delivery is
concerned. Some of the challenges were high cost of living, employment, frequent
changes in educational policies, large family size, financial constraints/low income
and so on. it was recommended that parents should be educated and encouraged by
stakeholders (Opinion leaders, NGO’s, government, teachers, school administrators
and missions) on the need to invest in their children’s education by contributing in
diverse ways, covering other areas identified in this study where they least contribute,
to support their children’s educational development. Also, Parents should be
counselled by educators to realize the importance of motivating their children to learn,
acquiring resources for the learners such as text books, exercise books; attending
P.T.A. meetings, visiting their children’s school to assess their academic progress;
giving personal attention and helping.
Description:
A dissertation in the Department of Early Childhood Education,
Faculty of Educational Studies, Submitted to the School of
Graduate Studies in partial fulfilment
of the requirements for the award of the degree of
Master of Education
(Early Childhood Education)
in the University of Education, Winneba
