About 68% Ghanaian Children Attend Extra Classes After School

Most Ghanaian school children attend extra classes notwithstanding government’s efforts at improving educational standards at the various schools, a research has revealed.

While about 68 percent of the school children attend their classes after their normal school periods, home tuition which are normally organised by parents for their wards at home accounts for about 23 per cent of children who attend extra classes.

“This is followed by nine per cent of students who have their extra classes by attending remedial school classes to better grades in subjects they did not perform well in previous examinations.”

These were contained in a research carried out by Mr Kwaku Anim for the Neogenics Edu-Consult to find out if such extra classes had any positive impact on school children and copied to the Ghana News Agency in Accra on Wednesday.

“The purpose of the study is to find out in principle whether extra classes had any effect on students’ performance and also understand the reasons behind students engaging in extra classes either organised by their schools they attend or by parents in the home.

He said the objective of the study was also to examine the effect of extra classes on students’ performance, understand the reasons why students were engaged in extra classes rather than sticking the mainstream tuition and to seek the causes of extra classes organised by schools and parents at home

The research said some of the reasons pertaining to the after school extra classes were, teachers are free from their main teaching hours and that they can attend to students. The reason to the home tuition could be that most parents see extra classes as an avenue for their children to receive the best of teaching from the teacher (one-on-one).

According to the study about 67 per cent of students also attended their extra classes on weekdays and that approximately 20 per cent of the students also attended extra classes monthly and 13 percent termly. “This may be that most students may prefer the weekly classes since they want to fill in any gaps in their lesson notes and also take on more extra work.”

On various subjects that students frequently attended extra classes in, it was revealed that about 22 percent of the students attended extra classes in core mathematics, followed by 14 per cent in science, and English language with approximately 10 per cent.

It also indicated that approximately 13 percent attended extra classes in elective mathematics and the explanations for the classes in these subjects indicated that, students mostly under perform in these three subjects since any failure could jeopardise their future education

The research also revealed that approximately 49 percent of the students pay less than GHS100 per term to do this classes, approximately 46 per cent paid between GHS100 to GHS300 per term to do the extra classes.

In the public schools where many students cannot afford to pay this amount, they may not have the opportunity to attend the classes and in the end, they may be left out.

As to whether they were wasting their time on extra classes, most students considered extra classes as an important element in the preparation towards their final examination as approximately 67 percent of the respondents do not see extra classes as a waste of time and that approximately 63 percent of the students strongly agreed to recommend it to others who were interested to boost their grades.

“Because of the premium placed on high grades rather than holistic education, many students see extra classes as an avenue to make these grades. Also, many families see extra classes as “intensive parenting” and the hiring of tutors may be part of a wider strategy in which parents place a great premium on education, value a cognitively stimulating environment for their children, and closely monitor their children’s activities.

“This style of parenting emphasises a careful plan of structured activities for children, in which tutoring is part of a series of private lesson.”

Source: GNA