The role of different stakeholders in Ethiopia in the improvement of educational quality

Abstract

Quality education is an everyday quest in Ethiopia, for both the educated and the lay. It has also become an issue of big scrutiny among both government and private institutions. But, the type and extent of roles to be played by different stakeholders are not yet clearly ascertained. One of the centers of attention in Ethiopia is health institution under the private holding. In this research, hence, attention was given to the role of stakeholders in improving education quality in private health institutions. For the materialization of the research, four private colleges were purposively selected as target research sites according to their ease for access of data. Such were Rift-Valley College, Central College of Health, Deborah and Keamed. Target informants were selected from among internal and external stakeholders. Accordingly, the informants among internal stakeholders were 40 students, 20 teachers and four officers. Likewise, four health professionals in the private health center were purposively chosen as data providers from among external stakeholders. The research data were collected in the form of responses to questionnaire from students and teachers; and, in the form of interview data from officers. After thorough analysis of the data, the researcher has come up with the findings that, internal stakeholders had stronger curricular and evaluative roles than external ones. Even among internal stakeholders, officers had the strongest role of making instructional and programmatic decisions while the chief ones, students, had the least. Overall, shortages were observed in terms of inter-collegial experiential exchange, research ties and human-resource exchange among the internal and the external stakeholders. So, the researcher has come to recommend the presence of workable ties with both internal and external stakeholders in order for the concerned health institutions to develop both instructional and field quality.