Effect of Parental Engagement on Students’ Performance in Bugesera District, Rwanda

Abstract

Parental engagement has been described to be a cornerstone in the performance of students at all levels of education. In Rwanda, secondary school performance has been a concern for quite several years and records indicate that Bugesera District has been among the poorly performing Districts in secondary national examinations. The overall objective of this work was to investigate the effect of parent engagement in the performance of their children whereas the specific objectives of this research were to identify the effect of communication between parents, teachers, and learners on students’ performance (ii) to highlight the contribution of home-based learning support on students’ performance and (iii) to explore the implication of participation of parents in school related school related activities on students’ performance. This research utilized a descriptive research design survey. The target population was 240 consisting of the school executive council members, school leaders, teachers, and students from which a sample of 69 subjects was selected to participate in this research including 5 school leaders, 5 teachers, 10 executive committee members, and 49 students from 5 schools of 5 sectors of Bugesera District. They were sampled with the use of simple random sampling and purposive sampling techniques. Guided interviews and questionnaires were used as data collection tools. In this research, questionnaires constituted quantitative data collection tools administered to students. These data were analyzed with the use of descriptive statistics (frequencies and percentages) and were presented with the use of tables and graphs. Qualitative data were collected with the use of interviews administered to head teachers, teachers, and School Executive Council(SEC) members and were analyzed thematically. The findings of this study have shown that communication between schools, parents, and learners is less effective. The reason is that schools tend to only communicate to parents only financial-related matters instead of focusing on students’ effective learning and performance. It was also found that parents pay less attention to home-based learning activities requiring children’s revision or completing homework assignments. The findings again indicated that students’ performance was found relatively higher for children whose parents participate in school activities. This study, therefore, concludes that parents should be engaged in communication, school activities, and home based learning with the purpose of mainly improving students’ performance before any other school-related affairs. The school leaders, teachers, and SEC members are key to revolutionize parent involvement practices and increasing mobilization and engaging activities for parents to acknowledge their role in the improvement of the children learning from school and their homes. Hence, it recommends that responsible agencies should ensure that school executive councils are functional and help mitigate issues hindering proper communication and collaboration between parents and schools; so that in the end, desired students’ performance can be attained.