EFFECTIVENESS OF COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION IN EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS OF KHYBER PAKHTUNKHWA

Abstract

Community participation is an important trend in the social and developmental uplift of societies, nations and states. Community participation in education was encouraged in the whole world in order to assist the governments and education authorities in improvement of educational institutions. Government of Pakistan and provincial government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (Pakistan) were endeavoring to involve communities in education for the same purposes. Community participatory organizations such as Parents Teachers councils (PTCs), Schools Management Committees (SMCs), and Parents Teachers Associations (PTAs) were formed in all of the public sector schools under the directions of federal and provincial governments through out the country. For this purpose, rules regulations were framed for running of such community participatory bodies, and some financial support was also granted each year to schools to be spent on the consultation of such community participatory organizations. The objectives of the study were (i) to see the involvement of communities in schools; (ii) to investigate the level of awareness of people about the importance of community participation in schools; (iii) to judge the contributions of communities to schools and (iv) to propose new ideas in community participation. Data were collected from 1200 respondents including Educational Managers of department, Heads of schools, Chairmen of Parents Teachers Councils, Teachers and Parents of the students of 10th classes from five different districts of the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Five questionnaires were used to collect data from the respondents. Chi-square test was applied, and it was found that in most of the aspects, the community participation in educational institutions of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was effective, while in some of the cases it was ineffective. It is recommended that (i) proper planning is necessary for popularizing the concept of community participation, xii (ii) awareness campaigns should be accelerated, (iii) proper trainings for elected members of community must be arranged and (iv)media should be used in activation of such participation.