Assessing parental support on early childhood learners’ education in Ahafo Ano North Municipality

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to assess parental support on early childhood learners’ education in Ahafo Ano North Municipality. Specifically, the study sought to find out the various types of support given by parents in Ahafo Ano North Municipality, assess the impact of parental support on learners’ academic performance and examine the challenges facing parents so far as early childhood education is concerned. The study was nested into the mixed methods research design involving the quantitative and qualitative approaches. The sample size was 20 parents, 4 early childhood teachers, 2 head teachers, and 15 learners. A self-developed questionnaire was used for the data collection. Pilot-testing of the instrument was done and reliability and validity were ensured. Ethical consideration was also ensured before the actual data collection. The data collected were analysed using descriptive statistics (frequencies and percentages, means and standard deviations). The study found that generally, most of the parents in the Ahafo Ano North Municipality do not really provide the needed support for their children. Again, it was found that most of the support from parents in the Ahafo Ano North Municipality do not really have much impact on the learners’ academic performance. Finally, it was found that there are some challenges facing parents so far as early childhood education management and delivery is concerned. Some of the challenges were high cost of living, employment, frequent changes in educational policies, large family size, financial constraints/low income and so on. it was recommended that parents should be educated and encouraged by stakeholders (Opinion leaders, NGO’s, government, teachers, school administrators and missions) on the need to invest in their children’s education by contributing in diverse ways, covering other areas identified in this study where they least contribute, to support their children’s educational development. Also, Parents should be counselled by educators to realize the importance of motivating their children to learn, acquiring resources for the learners such as text books, exercise books; attending P.T.A. meetings, visiting their children’s school to assess their academic progress; giving personal attention and helping.