Government Funding On Gender Access And Quality In Senior High Schools

The main aim of this study was to assess the impact of government funding on improving access and quality to senior high education in the Wa Municipality of the Upper West Region of Ghana.Successive governments,both military and civilian regimes,have funded senior high school education in Ghana with the aim of increasing access and improving quality of senior high school education since the nation attained independence on March 6th,1957.This study adopted both the quantitative and the qualitative methods to collect and analyze primary and secondary data from five(5)public senior high schools out of(six)6 as one is a private school in the Wa Municipality.Data from(five)5 public senior high schools were used because they are the beneficiaries of government funding in Ghana.The generalized linear model was used to test the impact of government funding on students' enrolment.The study reveals that government funding has a significant impact in increasing the enrolment among girls but it's not statistically significant in increasing boys' enrolment.Also,Data were collated and analyzed quantitatively using the Mann Whitney U Test to compare students' academic performance during the period of government partial funding(progressive free policy)from 2014/2015 to 2016/2017 academic years forming a group and no funding period,starting from 2011/2012 to 2013/2014 academic years which formed another group.For the purpose of this study,two groups of twenty(20)students were sampled making forty(40)students in total using the systematic sampling technique.The Mann Whitney U test was used to analyze academic performance of students who benefited from funding and those that do not benefit from funding.The findings indicate that government funding(progressive free policy)has a greater impact on students' academic performance.Finally,the study also seeks to evaluate the appropriateness of the free senior high policy in replacing the pre-existing progressive free policy.The questionnaire survey was used to collect primary data for this study.The descriptive statistics were used in analyzing the data of this study.A total number of Two hundred(200)responses were retrieved,and out of those retrieved,57 were females,and 143 were males.All 200 responses were usable in this study.The free senior high policy proved to put more butts on seats in helping to reduce financial burdens on parents than the pre-existing progressive free policy since nothing is paid by parents or guardians.