Implementation challenges of pre-tertiary education curriculum in public primary schools in the Ho Municipality

Abstract

Curriculum is a powerful tool used by the school to actualize the educational objectives. There is limited literature on effective implementation of the pre-tertiary education curriculum. Thus, the study explored the implementation challenges of pre tertiary education curriculum in the public primary schools in Ho municipality in the Volta Region. Convergent parallel design of the mixed method approach (qualitative and quantitative) was utilized. Two hundred and sixty (260) teachers and 4 School Improvement Support Officers (SISOs) were sampled. Multi-stage sampling method was used for this study and it involved three stages. The first stage involved the selection of the circuits in the Ho Municipality. Simple random sampling method specifically lottery method was conducted to select four (4) circuits, in the second stage, a census method was used to select all the 28 public primary schools and 260 teachers, 4 SISOs were purposively selected at the third stage. The main instruments employed in this study were questionnaire, structured interview guide and focus group discussion protocol. Quantitative data was analyzed using SPSS version 23.0. The qualitative data was thematically analyzed to build narrative to support the quantitative results. The study showed that physical facilities and teaching and learning resources are inadequate for effective implementation of pre-tertiary curriculum. The finding showed that the teachers at the various primary schools are prepared for the implementation of the pre-tertiary curriculum. It was evident that unavailability of school facilities, insufficient supply of textbook, limited funding capacities, too much work load for the teacher, and high teacher pupil ratio are the major challenges to the effective implementation of the pre-tertiary education curriculum. The study found a significant difference (t= 6.835, df=215, p=0.000 [p<0.05]) between challenges teachers faced and their gender. According to the study, teachers experience differs in respect of the challenges (F= 475.135, p=.000<0.05). The analysis showed that the University of Education,Winneba http://ir.uew.edu.gh xiv challenges teachers faced differ in respect of their educational level (F=275.835, P<0.05). It was concluded that teachers are faced with numerous challenges in the implementation of the pre-tertiary curriculum. The study recommended that Ho Municipal Education Directorate in collaboration with Ghana Education Service should supply schools with adequate learning resource materials to enable teachers play their roles satisfactorily in the implementation of the pre-tertiary education curriculum