Assessment of Impact of Implementation of Fee-Free Education Policy on Performance of Public Secondary Schools

Abstract

Regardless of the prevailing situation in the implementation of the fee-free education (FFE) policy for about 7 years now, there is limited published studies which investigated the impact of implementation of fee-free education policy on the performance of public secondary schools in Chamwino district council. The study intends to fill this knowledge gap by assessing the impact of implementing fee-free education policy on the performance of public secondary schools in terms of the trends of student enrollment, dropout rate and pass rate in the district. The importance of the study is to provide better understanding regarding the impact of implementation of fee-free education on the performance of public ordinary level secondary schools in the district. The study applied cross-sectional study design with a mixed quantitative and qualitative research methods. The study was carried out in Chamwino district council where a random sample of 8 public ordinary secondary schools and 441 respondents were selected for data collection. The study participants included various stakeholders in education sector including, district officials, school management, school teachers and students in the public secondary schools in the district. Additionally, secondary data regarding the amount of government financing, student enrollment, dropout and pass rates were collected from secondary sources. SPSS software was used for analysis of quantitative data while content method was adopted for creating the themes, coding and summarizing the results of qualitative data. The results indicated that there was a rapid increase of student’s enrolment from 2016 which was resulted from the implementation of fee-free education policy. Pearson correlation coefficient indicated that the level of government funding was positively and significantly correlated with student enrollment in public secondary schools in Chamwino District Council (r = 0.986, p = 0.000). It was noted that while the introduction of the FFE policy resulted into sharp decline of dropout rate to 4.6% in 2016, it was followed by irregular trend of increase and decline of dropout rate in schools. The result shows that there was a rapid increase of students’ pass rate to 87.7% in 2016 followed by a steady high students’ pass rate from 2016 – 2022. Pearson correlation coefficient shows that the level of government funding was positively and significantly correlated with student pass rates in public secondary schools in Chamwino District Council (r = 0.887, p = 0.000). The researcher concludes that the implementation of fee-free education policy. The implementation of fee-free education policy has resulted to a general increase of student’s enrolment, has not brought significant impact in reducing students’ dropout rates and has the impact of increasing the student’s pass rates in public ordinary level secondary schools. It is recommended that the government should consider prioritizing education in its budget allocation and ensure the adequate and timely disbursement of funds to schools