THE IMPACT OF ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY OF SCHOOL BUILDINGS ON STUDENT’S ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENTS

Abstract

The problem understudy was to investigate “the impact of environmental quality of school buildings on student’s academic achievements”, with the objectives to bring forth environmental quality of school buildings, and, to determine and evaluate its importance. All government higher secondary schools (male and female) and all government degree colleges (male and female) of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa constitute the population of this research, whereas to conduct this empirical study, students of two government higher secondary schools and two government degree colleges from four districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa were selected as sample. The study was delimited to the subject of English. Hundred students of intermediate part-I from each selected institute were taken as sample. The duration of the experiment was three weeks. Academic qualifications and training backgrounds of subject specialists and lecturers of respective institutes were considered to be equal. To set a baseline about the academic level of students in this post-test only design, their marks in the subject of English at Secondary level was considered. Prior to the commencement of the study, detailed information on the five selected variables was obtained by carefully filling the questionnaire designed for this purpose in a walk through survey of post occupancy evaluation of selected buildings. After three weeks, the academic achievement of students was evaluated through post test. Data obtained through aforementioned tools was analyzed; the Mean, Variance, Standard Deviation, Standard Error Mean, Correlation and T-test was computed from the collected data and was interpreted. All the information collected was analyzed and presented through tables and graphs. Findings of the study revealed a considerable impact of the environmental quality on student’s academic achievement. Results obtained from the analysis of the data gathered in the walk-through survey, while revealing interesting facts about institutional buildings, also endorsed the findings.