Abstract
<div>We identified the pertinent factors affecting parents’ choice of a particular senior high school (SHS) in Ghana, focusing on parents with at least one child in a SHS in Ghana and are residents of Cape Coast. The approach and design used were quantitative and descriptive survey design respectively. A sample of 637 of the parents, made up of 349 women and 288 men, was used. The parents were selected using convenience and snowball sampling techniques. A questionnaire, with a reliability coefficient ranging from 0.735 – 0.829, was the instrument used to collect the data. Out of the 637 parents sampled, we were able to retrieve 588 completed questionnaires, representing 92.3 percent response rate. The data were analysed using cross tabulation and linear multiple regression analysis. The findings revealed that parents preferred public boarding SHS which is single-sex education. Also, parents preferred schools with excellent academic record, quality instruction, and positive school values. Similarly, family/parental related factors such as family moral and religious values, and parents’ income and education levels, and also social related factors such as school popularity and brand, peer influence, and social network predict significantly and positively parents’ choice of a particular SHS. We conclude that school, family and social related factors are able to influence parents’ school choice. It is recommended to heads of SHSs to be attentive to the various institutional factors and create schools that address the needs of the parents in their communities in order to attract and retain students.</div><div> </div><p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0889/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>
Highlights
Education is seen as the great equaliser, the key to a better future for all citizens
The purpose of the study was to identify the pertinent factors affecting parents’ choice of Senior High School (SHS) for their children, focusing on parents in Cape Coast, Ghana. In line with this purpose, the following research questions were formulated to guide and direct the study: 1) What type of SHS do parents in Cape Coast choose for their children? 2) What are the factors that influence parents’ decision of selecting a SHS for their kids?
In order to gain an understanding of the general situation and meaning parents give to school choice, we employed cross-sectional descriptive survey design
Summary
Education is seen as the great equaliser, the key to a better future for all citizens. In Ghana, access to quality secondary education is persistently becoming unequal as a result of the increasing nature of inequalities among the citizens with regard to their socioeconomic status (Milledzi & Saani, 2019). In the case of private schools, parents continue to pay these fees, a situation which is making most parents preferring public SHS as compared to private SHS. This has resulted to increase in enrolment in the various public SHSs, and most prominently lessen the weight on parents from taking care of their children fees (Ministry of Education [MoE], 2019)
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