The
Determinants of Student Performance
Education is a very costly project for nations and individual
families. Therefore, it is very crucial to understand the factors affecting its
provisions and the performance of learners. The majority of studies on student
performance have related student performance to various aspects of education,
such as school quality, teaching quality, teacher remuneration, class size, and
Learners' characteristics.
Teacher Remuneration
Remuneration refers to payment or compensation
received for services or employment. This includes the base salary and any
bonuses or other economic benefits that an employee or executive receives
during employment, (Investopedia, 2010). Thus teacher remuneration
refers to the total compensation received by a teacher, which includes
not only the base salary but options, bonuses, expense accounts and other forms
of compensation. A study on schools in India investigated the relationship
between performance-related pay and student achievement (Kingdon & Teal,
2002), addressing the important issue of endogeneity in the relationship
between pay and achievement. They found strong evidence that
performance-related pay in the private sector affects student achievement, but
no evidence of a similar cause-effect relationship in public schools. In
Rwandan education system, private schools teachers are better paid than in
public schools. This difference in payment is very important at primary school
level where a private primary school teacher earns up to three times the salary
of a public primary school teacher. The fact that a teacher is well paid plays
an important role on his /her work performance and on his/her pupils'
performance as well. Even though the salary may not be the main motivator of
teachers, it plays a very important role in this issue.
Regarding the importance of teachers in general, Archer (1999)
and Armentano (2003) argue that teachers are the most important influence on
student progress, even more important than socioeconomic status and school
location. Furthermore, Darling-Hammond (2000) concludes that measures of
teacher preparation and certification are by far the strongest correlates of
student achievement in reading and mathematics.
Teacher Quality
Teachers are central to any consideration of schools, and a
majority of education policy discussions focus directly or indirectly on the
role of teachers. There is a prima facie case for the concentration on
teachers, because they are the largest single budgetary element in schools.
Moreover, parents, teachers, and administrators emphasize repeatedly the
fundamental role that teachers play in the determination of school quality. Yet
there remains little consensus among researchers on the characteristics of a
good teacher, let alone on the importance of teachers in comparison to other
determinants of academic performance. Teacher quality is the concept that
embodies what the teacher does and they can do in terms of their assigned roles
in the school. Related to the concept of teacher quality is teaching quality
and it has been observed that one way of determining the quality of teaching in
schools is by looking at the intermediate outcome of student performance
(Sanders, 1999). There are several ways to evaluate a student's
«quality» attributable to formal education, but the most tractable
indicator is how he or she performs in tests (World Bank, 2003).
Teachers' Degree Levels
Teacher quality involves the level of qualification and
research on the value of a teacher's advanced degree is mixed: some studies
show that while additional teacher education has a positive correlation with
student achievement in some cases, others find that it negatively affects
achievement (Greenwald, Hedges, & Laine, 1996; Hanushek, 1986). Goldhaber
and Brewer (1997) found that a teacher's advanced degree is not generally
associated with increased student learning from the eighth to the tenth grade,
but having an advanced degree in math and science for math and science teachers
appears to influence students' achievement. The same results were not found to
be true for teachers of English or history. In the same way Goldhaber and
Brewer (1997) suggest that the findings of other studies about the impact on
student achievement of teachers' advanced degrees are inconclusive because they
considered only the level of the degree and not the subject of the degree,
which may affect student achievement in different ways than the degree level.
Nevertheless, results from all the studies seem to imply that there is not a
positive correlation between teachers having advanced degrees in subjects other
than those they teach and student achievement.
Teachers' Years of Experience
There is a wide range of findings on the relationship between
years of teaching experience and student outcomes. Hanushek (1986) found that
fewer than half of the 109 previous studies on the estimated effects of teacher
experience showed that experience had any statistically significant effect on
student achievement; of those, 33 studies found that additional years of
experience had a significant positive effect, but seven found that more
experience actually had a negative impact on student achievement. Other studies
show a stronger positive relationship between teacher experience and student
outcomes in some, but not all, cases they reviewed (e.g., Greenwald et al.,
1996). Murnane (1995) suggests that the typical teaching learning curve peaks
in a teacher's first few years (estimated at year two for reading and year
three for math).
It is also plausible that a positive finding on experience
actually results from the tendency of more senior teachers to select
higher-level classes with higher achieving students (Hanushek, 1986). Thus we
might reasonably infer that the magnitude of the experience effect, should it
exist, is not terribly large.
Teacher absenteeism, an observable indicator of teacher effort
and performance, has been the focus of several recent studies. Chaudhury et al.
(2000) report on surveys in six developing countries that yield observational
data on absence of teachers and health workers: India, Uganda, Peru, Ecuador,
Bangladesh and Indonesia; averaging across the six countries, they found an
absence rate of 19 percent among primary school teachers. Teacher absence
predicts lower scores of pupils in tests in general.
Being still on human resources concern, various educators for
example, Ukeje (1970) and Fafunwa (1969) have written extensively on the prime
importance of teachers to the educational development of any nation albeit
simple, complex, developed or developing. From the writings of these
educators, one can infer that whatever facilities are available, whatever
content is taught, whichever environment the school is situated and whatever
kind of pupils are given to teach, the important and vital role of the teacher
cannot be over-emphasized. Assuming that necessary facilities are
adequately provided for, the environment is conducive to learning, the
curriculum satisfies the needs of the students and the students themselves have
interest in learning, learning cannot take place without the presence of the
teacher. Fagbamiye (1977b) noted that schools with stable, experienced and
qualified teachers usually have better school facilities in terms of school
buildings, books and equipments than those schools which have difficulty in
attracting experienced and qualified staff. Teachers' conditions in private
primary schools of Rwanda seem to be better than those of their counterparts of
public primary schools and thereby, their motivation differs accordingly;
therefore, this has an effect on pupils' academic performance.
School Size and Class Size
About class size, a comparative study of public schools among
US states found that in Tennessee, smaller class sizes contribute positively to
student learning, particularly in fields like elementary reading
(Darling-Hammond, 2000). In another assessment, Angrist & Lavy (1999) use
regression-discontinuity design and find that reducing class size increases
fourth- and fifth-grade test scores in Israeli public schools. For the case of
Rwandan schools, public primary schools are very crowded (especially because of
EFA principles) at an extent of 70 pupils and beyond per class while in private
primary schools, a big class doesn't hosts more than 35 pupils. This can be a
positive factor of good pupils' performance in private primary schools of
Rwanda in that teacher can individualize his/her teaching very easily if the
class is not too big. Similarly, Case & Deaton (1999) separate their sample
of South African data into races, notably Blacks and Whites, and look at the
impact of pupil-teacher ratio on education attainment, enrolment, and numerical
and literacy test scores. Especially for the test score results among Blacks,
they find that when school facilities and education attainment are included as
controls, a higher pupil-teacher ratio has a negative effect on mathematics
score but a positive and insignificant effect on literacy. If higher
pupil-teacher ratio has a negative effect on math score it is because math asks
a great concentration and, in most cases, an individualization of teaching.
Being so, all teaching subjects that need a great concentration like geography,
physics, chemistry etc. are likely to be negatively influenced by a high
pupil-teacher ratio.
School Quality and Socio-Economic and Cultural
Level of Parents/Guardians
In enumerating the factors that could be responsible for
varying intra-and inter-school/academic achievement, Coombs (1970), listed four
important factors including the acute scarcity of instructional resources which
he said constrained educational systems from responding more fully to new
demands'. He claimed that, in order to do their part in meeting the
crisis in education, educational systems will need real resources that money
can buy, they will need a fuller share of the nations' manpower, not merely to
carry on the present work of education, but to raise its quality, efficiency
and productivity. They will need buildings, equipments and more learning
materials.
Momoh (1980) carried out a research on the effects of
instructional resources on students' performances in WASC examination in Kwara
State. He correlated material resources with academic achievements of
students in ten subjects. Information was collected from the subject
teachers in relation to the resources employed in teaching in five
schools. The achievements of students in WASC examinations for the past
five years were related to the resources available for teaching each of the
subjects. He concluded that material resources have a significant effect
on students' achievement in each of the subjects. For the case of primary
schools of Rwanda in general, it is very clear that public primary schools do
not have enough means in terms of money to buy the required instructional
materials as they have almost only one funding source which is the government
and for private subsidized primary schools they can get another additional
funding source, the founder (e.g. religious congregation) of the school, but in
several cases this funding is not always operational. These schools are
restricted from making money by the law, local leaders at all levels and by the
parents' feeling that primary education is given freely in the light of UPE.
While private primary schools have varied ways of making money as they have no
restrictions, they can order the increase of the cost of education whenever
they want, they can do school businesses like opening a boutique, farming,
etc.; they can ask parents to buy any material needed at any cost and time if
it deems necessary.
The overall framework of schooling and schooling outcomes can
be posited as having supporting inputs which flow into schools where schooling
conditions are set to produce what we want to recognize as school outcomes
(Heneveld 1994; Heneveld &Craig 1995). Contextual factors in generating
school outcomes are the political will to embark on and support a schooling
system, the economic muscle to support and sustain the system, the cultural
milieu and how the school system aligns itself to the global trends in
education. All these help to shape the kind of outcomes we expect to see in
children who pass through the system. Directly linked to schooling itself are
moral, material and human resources made available to the school where a
conducive climate with the right mix of conditions are manipulated in a
classroom to produce desirable outcomes.
Learners' Characteristics
About the learners' characteristics as factor to academic
performance, very important are the children themselves with regard to how
ready they are to blend into the mix we call schooling. It is clear that the
factors are connected in an intricate way since we are dealing with social
issues where how one factor influences an outcome cannot be entirely
independent of the many other factors in the process.
However, when basic and fundamental elements of schooling are
considered it is possible to change the outcomes considerably because there is
little influence from external factors. When rudimentary schooling systems are
considered most external influences become minimized and changes in the basic
elements of schooling can lead to measurable changes in the outcomes.
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