Characteristics of coastal and other secondary schools (Key Stage 2)

METHODOLOGY The teacher characteristics investigated were; qualifications and experience. The study was conducted in Nandi South District, Kenya in the year 2012. The study adopted a causal – comparative research design. Role (2010) suggests that the cause – effect linkage is made logically as the research process proceeds. Therefore, in this study teacher characteristics could be a factor influencing student academic achievement. The study sampled 20 secondary schools in the district from a total population of 26. The respondents were teachers from 20 secondary schools within the district. Simple random sampling was used to select one teacher in each school. A questionnaire was used as instrument for data collection and data collected was analysed using both descriptive and inferential statistics.

The purpose of this research was to investigate pupil background characteristics and academic performance in senior secondary schools in Kitwe district with a view of recommending on how to improve pupils’ performance. The study was conducted in Kitwe district because in the past years pupils’ performance in senior secondary schools has been alarmingly deteriorating. The study used termly test data collected from senior secondary schools in Kitwe district. A representative sample of 150 grade ten and eleven pupils from senior secondary schools was used. The main instruments used to collect data in the study were the pupils’ questionnaire and parent interview guide.Data analysis was done using two methods. These were Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) and the information collected through interviews were analysed by coding it into themes, while the information from the questionnaires were analysed through the SPSS – generated tables, diagrams and percentages.The findings of the study suggested considerable variation in pupil performance. The study revealed that there were positive relationships between number of books at home, the language spoken at home and pupil’s performance. Furthermore, the analysis of the quantitative data revealed that there was a negative relationship between pupils’ age and family size.

As stated by Orhon (2012), teachers play a significant role in today’s schooling processes. They facilitate learning environments by providing opportunities for learners to explore their talents and convert them into abilities on the way to self-actualization. Teachers are also expected to encourage learners to become inventive individuals in society. Wayne and Youngs (2003) argue that “learners learn more from teachers with certain characteristics . . . Teachers differ greatly in their effectiveness, but teachers with and without different qualifications differ only a little” (pp. 100- 101). Given this, it could be argued that exploring the characteristics of teachers in general and EFL teachers in particular could be of paramount importance and worth investigation since the findings might help pre-service teachers get acquainted with those teacher characteristics defined and identified as good and favorable in order to equip and fine-tune themselves with such qualities and put them into effect in their teaching if they intend to achieve a better and more successful outcome. Thus, the present study explored comparatively the distinctive characteristics of senior secondary schools language teachers and private language institutes teachers, both considered as teachers of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in two basically different foreign language teaching contexts.

According to Okorie (2002) leadership is getting the job done through people. This definition points to two basic ingredients for effective leadership accomplishment. They are getting the job done and influencing others (through people). The personal characteristics of a leader remain essential factors in conflict management in the school system. Age, qualification, marital status and the likes are factors that determine the extent to which a school principal is able to achieve the school goals through effective management of conflict. This paper, therefore, intently examined influence of principal’s characteristics on conflict management in Kwara State senior secondary schools, Nigeria.

Personal or background characteristics can influence head teachers instructional leadership in schools. This study investigated the relationship, if any, between the head teacher’s instructional leadership and the head teacher’s background variables such as education/ professional qualification, gender, age,p and teaching experience in the implementation of curriculum (Environmental Education) in secondary schools. Thirty headteachers and 183 teachers randomly sampled participated. Questionnaire was used to collect data in the survey. Findings: The Instructional Leadership Mean Score for mostvariables was moderate,Instructional Leadership Mean Score was independent of head teacher characteristics such as sex, age, and teaching experience but dependent on head teacher qualification. Recommendation:

The study adopted the descriptive research design. The population of the study consisted of all the 187 principals in Ekiti State secondary schools. The sample of this study comprised 36 respondents using multistage sampling procedure. Simple random sampling technique was used to select two Local Government Areas (L.G.As) from each of the three senatorial districts. From each LGA, six secondary schools were selected. All the principals of the selected schools were used. The researchers made used of two self-designed questionnaires to collect information from the respondents. The designed questionnaire titled “Teachers’ Classroom Management Characteristics Questionnaire” (TCMCQ) was used in collecting information from principals on the teachers’ classroom management. This was accomplished through principals’ ratting of teachers’ lesson plan, student discipline, teaching methodology, and use of instructional materials and students’ evaluation. The principals of the 36 sampled schools responded to the questionnaire. The questionnaire was divided into sections ‘A’ and ‘B’. Section A comprised 4 items on teachers’ demographic data while section B comprised 20 items on teachers’ classroom management. The second instrument was preform of (WASSCE) results for a period of five years (2011-2015). This was gathered from sampled schools to ascertain the trend of the academic performance of students. The first instruments was validated by four experts in the Department of Educational Management, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife and the reliability was also ensured 0.89 while the validity and reliability of the second instrument has been subjected to standard scrutinize by WASSCE body before they release the final results. The school principals were equally interviewed on how their teachers manage their classroom. The data collected in the study was analysed using Pearson Product Moment Correlation (PPMC) statistically to address the 5 hypotheses formulated. The hypothesis was tested at 0.05 level of significance.

Previous studies have focused on the effective aspects of leadership in education and neglected the toxic aspects of educational leadership which is important to identify the behaviours of school leaders who intentionally and unknowingly inflict enduring damage on their followers and school organisation. Thus, this study examined the relationship between toxic leadership behaviour, followership characteristics and their productivity in Lagos State senior secondary schools. Three hypotheses (tested at 0.05 level of significance). With the study’s foundation anchored on correlational and descriptive research designs, its population comprised all Principals, Vice-principals, and teachers in public senior secondary schools in Lagos State. The sample sizes were 98 Principals, 196 Vice- principals and 980 teachers after stratifying the population into Education Districts and thereafter selected through purposive sampling technique. Analysis was carried out using both descriptive and inferential statistics. Pearsons Product Moment Correlation Analysis and Regression Analysis were used to test the three hypotheses. Findings indicate that a positive and non-significant relationship existed between toxic leadership behaviour and followership commitment to work in Lagos State senior secondary schools (r = 0.025, ρ>0.05); the study also found that there was a negative and non-significant relationship between toxic leadership behaviour and followership loyalty in Lagos State senior secondary schools (r = -0.017, ρ>0.05), and the study further found that there is a positive relationship among toxic leadership behaviour, followership commitment to work, and followership loyalty with followership productivity in Lagos State senior secondary schools. It is concluded that toxic leadership is present in Lagos State public senior secondary schools, as evidenced in the study. The study therefore recommended that school teachers should be exposed to professional development training and opportunities particularly in leadership before placement for leadership positions, as leadership preparation and training are central to school effectiveness and school improvement, and qualified consultants with expertise in organisational leadership should be engaged during the search and selection processes of school leaders so as to detect toxic leaders in waiting.

Other theorists have adopted a non-hierarchical approach to conceptualising student voice. Laura Lundy, an advocate for children’s rights, proposed a model incorporating four overlapping factors. These are ‘Space’ / Voice’ and ’Influence / Audience’ (Lundy, 2007). Her view was that any student voice project had to address all four factors if it was to avoid tokenism – and therefore violate the principles of the UNCRC. Godfrey (2011) gives a practical example of the use of Lundy’s model as a conceptual framework in the analysis of a specific student voice case study in the United Kingdom. A similar framework for educators to use in their evaluation of student voice initiatives is the “reflective dialogical tool” of Pearce and Wood (2016, p. 13). This model is structured around a set of four “building blocks or conditions which together are required for student voice work to be transformative” (Pearce & Wood, 2016, p. 2), a core requirement. These writers state that student voice must be: “Dialogic”, ensuring that students are spoken ‘with’, not ‘to’ or ‘for’; Intergenerational, involving young people, and adults who are prepared to listen; Collective and Inclusive, including a truly representative sample of the many student voices that exist in the school; and Transgressive, resulting in what Nelson (2014) and Fielding (2011) refer to as ‘radical practice’. By this they mean that the exercise of contributing their voice provides students “with the tools or medium to resist, escape or transform systems that promote inequality” (Pearce & Wood, 2016, p. 11). Writers such as these and Breslin (2011) see student voice as a key component of a fundamental shift in educational and societal thinking that must occur if the rights of young people are to be truly recognised. Breslin (2011), for example, calls for citizen-rich schools, where voice carries on out into the community, particularly in those areas deemed under-privileged. Pearce and Wood (2016) insist that student voice initiatives can only be considered successful if they bring about authentic change, which will inevitably involve students having the opportunity to “transgress traditional borders and power relations” (p. 11).

globally (Farmer, 2013). The United Kingdom (UK), Dainton report of 1968 established that the number of boys studying physical science subjects beyond compulsory period far outweighed the number of girls. Physics is believed to be one of the oldest and probably the most developed of all the Sciences (Keith, 2015). It addresses the most fundamental Abstract: The purpose of this paper was to address the following objectives to analyze the influence of student’s attitude towards Physics and find out the influence of student gender on the performance of Physics in KCSE in Laikipai County. The ex post facto research design was adopted. All the 67 secondary schools in Laikipia County of which only 57 mixed public secondary schools were purposively considered. The study also targeted the immediate KCSE graduates (2013, 2014 and 2015) who had done Physics as a selected subject in their KCSE. Each year, there are approximately 513 students who had graduated having done Physics in KCSE. The study administered a questionnaire to the form four Physics teacher and 62 former candidates who did their Physics paper in KCSE. The data was analyzed with the aid of SPSS vs 20 and presented using tables and figures. The response rate was 73% for teachers and 90% of the student sampled. Te study established that most of the students 62% had a negative attitude towards Physics. However, the attitude does not stay on. It was also noted that gender might not have any influence on the attitude of the students towards physics wince 70% of the respondents disagreed with the statement. The study found that attitude builds by student’s influence their learning abilities in a particular subject. Further the position and negative attitudes of student’s themselves have been suggested as a contributory factor to misconceptions

Copyright©2018 by authors, all rights reserved. Authors agree that this article remains permanently open access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International License Abstract As education has many variables, essential arrangements are required in different areas to enhance its quality. School buildings, environmental arrangements, teaching and learning process, sources and materials, teachers, principals, health and security are the variables of which come to mind first. The concept of 'child-friendly school (CFS)' which was initiated and attempted to actualize by UNICEF’s studies, has a nature including all these variables listed above and even more. The current study tires to identify to what extend the teachers, the principals and the secondary school students (5 th to 8 th grades) perceive their school as child-friendly. The mixed method approach was chosen for the study. The quantitative data was collected with 'Child-Friendly School Scale (CFSS)' developed by the researchers. A total of 54 schools and 4007 students comprise the sample, and the scale was implemented in one class from each grade level chosen randomly. The qualitative data were obtained from the volunteer teachers. Results revealed that the CFS characteristics of the schools changed according to the socioeconomic level of the school, gender of the students and the grade level. It can be suggested to construct a sense of awareness for the child-friendly school concept, to provide the continuity of the arrangements and to make them functional.

We provide new evidence about the degree of social segregation in England’s secondary schools, employing a cross-national perspective. Analysis is based on data for 27 rich industrialised countries from the 2000 and 2003 rounds of the Programme of International Student Assessment (PISA), using a number of different measures of social background and of segregation, and allowing for sampling variation in the estimates. England is shown to be a middle-ranking country, as is the USA. High segregation countries include Austria, Belgium, Germany and Hungary. Low segregation countries include the four Nordic countries and Scotland. In explaining England’s position, we argue that its segregation is mostly accounted for by unevenness in social background in the state school sector. Focusing on this sector, we show that cross-country differences in segregation are associated with the prevalence of selective choice of pupils by schools. Low-segregation countries such as those in the Nordic area and Scotland have negligible selection in schools. High segregation countries like Austria, Germany and Hungary have separate school tracks for academic and vocational schooling and, in each case, over half of this is accounted for by unevenness in social background between the different tracks rather than by differences within each track.

England’s private schools are, in general, more exclusive than those in other countries. Table 3 contrasts, for a selection of countries, the percentage of 15 year olds with a high social background in private schools, defined on the management basis, with the corresponding percentage in state schools. Two definitions of ‘high’ are used: above the national median and above the national upper quartile. One half of all pupils at private schools in England are in the top quarter of the distribution of social position: the difference of nearly 30 percentage points from the figure for pupils in state schools much larger than the OECD average. In Scotland, the difference is slightly bigger again. Changing the high/low cut-off to the median produces even larger differences between children in private and state schools. (The situation in England and Scotland relative to other countries in part reflects the fact that privately managed English and Scots schools are invariably privately funded as well, whereas this is not the case with many privately managed schools in a number of other countries.)

England’s private schools are, in general, more exclusive than those in other countries. Table 3 contrasts, for a selection of countries, the percentage of 15 year olds with a high social background in private schools, defined on the management basis, with the corresponding percentage in state schools. Two definitions of ‘high’ are used: above the national median and above the national upper quartile. One half of all pupils at private schools in England are in the top quarter of the distribution of social position: the difference of nearly 30 percentage points from the figure for pupils in state schools much larger than the OECD average. In Scotland, the difference is slightly bigger again. Changing the high/low cut-off to the median produces even larger differences between children in private and state schools. (The situation in England and Scotland relative to other countries in part reflects the fact that privately managed English and Scots schools are invariably privately funded as well, whereas this is not the case with many privately managed schools in a number of other countries.)

head-teachers and head of department for mathematics, while teachers had to respond to structured interview questions. This design is based on the strength of both quantitative and qualitative research methods. 4.2 SAMPLE AND SAMPLING METHOD Two secondary schools located in the same catchment area (S1) and form one classes were purposely selected. One school streams (Ndamba) while the other does not (Muchini) at form one level. Two classes at Ndama School, the upper stream class (1A 1 ) and lower stream (1A 5 ) were purposely selected while students in both schools were randomly selected. Two classes at Muchini School participated in the study. A total sample size of 131 students (F=66, M=65) participated in the study. Ndama had a total of 67students (F=33, M=34), while Muchini had 64 students (F=33, M=31). The mean age of students was 13. A total of 16 teachers from Ndama School volunteered to participate in the study while two head-teachers and two heads mathematics of department were interviewed.

Another topic I was curious about at the beginning of my research was how coteachers managed the grading responsibilities for the class. The participants in this study responded to my questions regarding assessment in a way that clearly indicated that they had discussed this aspect of their partnership and apparently were not concerned about it. For each coteaching pair, the general educator prepared assessments for the class and the special educator previewed them to recommend any necessary revisions or adaptations so all learners would have the opportunity to complete them without being unfairly disadvantaged because of their disabilities. Both the general educators and special educators contributed to the grading responsibilities and generated marking period grades in consultation with each other. However, in both districts, there was a clear delineation of who recorded student progress and where that progress was recorded – the special educator was responsible for documenting progress on the IEPs and the general educators were responsible for documenting grades on the online classroom management system and report card.

Working with other agencies 56 The three local authorities visited as part of the survey recognise the importance of working with other partners to support families to improve the attendance and attainment of pupils. There are strong and effective links between the local authority, schools and other agencies, particularly in improving the attendance of hard-to-reach pupils. However, the extent and impact of multi-agency working in schools across Wales are too variable. The degree to which multi-agency approaches support schools effectively is determined by the knowledge that schools have of their services, the willingness of schools to engage with them and the ability of school leaders to ensure that their schools are included in initiatives.

Additional information regarding the hearing procedures will be provided to the parent or eligible stu- dent when notified of the right to a hearing. 3. The right to consent to disclosures of personally identifiable information contained in the student’s education records, except to the extent that FERPA authorizes disclosure without consent. One excep- tion which permits disclosure without consent is disclosure to school officials with legitimate educational interests. A school official is a person employed by the District as an administrator, supervisor, instruc- tor, or support staff member (including health or medical staff and law enforcement personnel); a per- son serving on the School Board; a person or company with whom the District has contracted to per- form a special task (such as an attorney, auditor, medical consultant, or therapist); or a parent or stu- dent serving on an official committee, such as a disciplinary or grievance committee, or assisting an- other school official in performing his or her tasks. A school official has a legitimate educational inter- est if the official needs to review an educational record in order to fulfill his or her responsibility. Upon request, the District discloses educational records without consent of officials to another school district in which a student seeks or intends to enroll.

Like many other reviewers, Wyles (2004) evaluates and concludes that Moodle is one of the most user-friendly and flexible open source courseware products available. Moo- dle has excellent documentation, strong support for security and administration, and is moving towards IMS/SCORM standards. The key strength of Moodle is that it has been developed with both pedagogy and technology in mind. It has a robust develop- ment and user community. It is great for languages although some development may be needed for robust handling of MathML and enhanced tracking features. Still, this program is highly recommended. Moodle is a student-centered course management system designed to help educators who want to create quality online courses. The software is used all over the world by universities, schools, companies and independent teachers.

Table 2.10: Total number of dropouts in 2001 The above table shows that there is 5 percent of dropouts from the 2001 total enrolment in secondary schools. The main reason is because some parents were not able to finance their child’s school fees; therefore the students were not able to complete the scholastic year. Other reasons include termination from school due to serious misconduct or poor academic performance. It is important to note that some schools tend to include year 10 dropouts at the end of the year, which may affect this data. The table above shows that there is a high number of dropouts in year 8 and year 10.

3. SALARY AND PENSION In consideration of the Teacher undertaking the duties assigned, the School shall authorise the Department of Education and Science to pay the appropriate salary and allowance for the appropriate grade of Deputy Principal post from the schedule of salaries and allowances for teachers at the rates agreed from time to time in the Teachers’ Conciliation and Arbitration Scheme or such other Scheme as may replace same or be otherwise agreed from time to time. The appropriate rate of Deputy Principal’s allowance which will be paid to the Deputy Principal in addition to scale salary will be determined by reference to the criteria agreed nationally from time to time and published in Department of Education and Science Circulars.