COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT IN LOWER BASIC EDUCATION DELIVERY FOR PROMOTING PUPILS ACADEMIC INTEREST AND PERFORMANCE IN PANKSHIN LOCAL GOVERNMENT EDUCATION AUTHORITY, PLATEAU STATE

Abstract

The study investigated community involvement in lower basic education delivery for promoting pupils academic interest and performance in Pankshin local government education authority, Plateau State. Three research question and two hypotheses guided the study. The study adopted the descriptive survey design. Simple random sampling was adopted to select 200 respondents out of the total population of 600 teachers from Lower basic schools in Pankshin L.G.A. The instrument titled: community involvement in lower basic education delivery for promoting pupils academic interest and performance (CILBEDPPAIP) questionnaire was used to collect data from the respondents from the sampled schools. Face and content validity of the instrument was determined by three experts. The reliability of the instrument was established using Cronbach Alpha and the reliability coefficients of 0.82, 0.80 and 0.81 was obtained with an overall reliability coefficient of 0.81 which was considered high for the study.  Data were collected and analyzed using mean and standard deviation while Pearson Moment correlation coefficient was used to test the hypotheses. The findings of the study revealed that the communities are involved in lower basic education delivery at moderate rate and absence of community involvement in lower basic education would affects pupils’ academic interest and performance poorly. Findings also revealed low positive involvement of community in lower basic education delivery for promoting pupils academic interest and performance. There was significant relationship between community involvement in lower basic education delivery and pupil’s academic interest and performance in Pankshin Local Government Education Authority. There is no significant difference between community Involvement in Basic Education Delivery in Lower Basic schools in Pankshin Local Government Education Authority and Academic Interest of Pupils in Lower Basic Schools in Pankshin. Based on the findings of the study , it was recommended that school heads should ensure good school community relationship as this could help mobilize community members to increase their involvement in school management. On the other hand, advocacy materials can be printed and placed at strategic corners in the school as well as awareness campaign on the importance of community involvement in education to enhance sustainable growth in education and economy.