Impacts of School Environment on Girls’ Academic Achievement in Selected Primary Schools of South Gondar Administrative Zone, Ethiopia

Abstract

Factors which affect girls’ academic achievement are many in number and multi-dimensional. The main purpose of this study was to explore the impact of school environment on primary school girls’ academic achievement in selected government primary schools in Debretabor City Administration. Three semi-urban primary schools were chosen using purposive sampling as well as study participants were selected using simple random sampling and purposive sampling techniques. Mixed methods approach was chosen, and questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, document analysis and personal observation were selected to gather data from discussants. Convergent parallel data analysis procedures together with descriptive and inferential statistics (for quantitative data) as well as thematic analysis, narration and description (for qualitative data) were used to analayze the data obtained from all study participants. Findings of this study revealed notable results that four school related factors affect primary school girls' academic achievement differently: physical, social, academic and psychological factors with the highest (Mean: 3.22, SD: 0.69570), higher (Mean: 2.80, SD: 0.73861), moderate (Mean: 2.20, SD: 0.58647) and lower (Mean: 1.67, SD: 0.64634) mean values respectively. The strongest positive correlation (r = 0.566, p = 0.000) between academic achievement and the aggregate of all school related factors highlighted the impacts of the mult faced nature of school environment on girls’ academic achievement. The regression analysis also indicated that physical, social and psychological factors significantly predict girls' academic achievement with the strongest influence of physical and social factors. Where as, the model provided a statistically significant prediction of girls' academic achievement with moderate variance among the four factors i.e, the model summary portrayed that the overall model comprising physical, academic, psychological, and social factors accounted for 22.2% of IMPACTS OF SCHOOL ENVIRONMENT ON GIRLS’ ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT XII the variance in girls' academic achievement /score indicated by R square. In addition, the adjusted R square adjusted for the number of predictors in the model providing a slightly lower estimate of the variance explained by 21.2% which implied that the standard error of the estimate depicted an indication of the accuracy of the predictions. Accordingly, the study forwards implications for social work professionals, educational authorities and other researchers who want to conduct their studies in the area. As well, this study recommends possible strategies to mitigate the impacts of the four identified school related factors on primary school girls’ academic achievement so that their academic outcomes would be improved to foster holistic and sustainable development.