Parents’ Support and Students’ Continuation among Universal Secondary Education Schools in Masaka City, Uganda

Abstract

The general objective of this research was to examined a connection amongst parents’ support and students’ retention among Universal Secondary Education schools in Masaka City. The subsequent theories were the focus of the investigation; i) To assess the relationship between parents’ provision of learning materials and students’ retention, ii) To examine the relationship between parents’ payment of supplementary fees and students’ retention, and iii) To analyze the relationship between parents’ monitoring of students’ conduct and students’ retention among Universal Secondary Education schools in Masaka City. This study adopted a correlational research methodology coupled using a quantitative approach. The size of the sample of 86 respondents is considered comprising of head teachers, parents, and teachers from the two selected Universal Secondary Education schools in Masaka city. Both descriptive analysis and correlation analysis was employed to provide answers to these investigation objectives. This investigation revealed that there’s a robust optimistic and substantial connection amongst students’ retention and parents’ provision of learning materials among Secondary Universal Education institutes within Masaka City. This investigation as well revealed that there’s a robust optimistic and substantial connection amongst students’ retention and parents’ payment of supplementary fees among Secondary Universal Educational institutes within Masaka City. Further, this study also revealed that there’s a robust optimistic and substantial connection amongst parents’ monitoring of student’s conduct as well as students’ retention among Secondary Universal Education institutes in Masaka City. Therefore, the study concludes that parents’ support in terms of parents’ provision of learning materials, payment of additional costs by parents, and a parent’s monitoring of a student’s conduct has a statistically significant association with students’ retention in that an increase in the different aspects of parents’ support resultantly leads to an improvement in students’ retention among Universal Secondary Education schools in Masaka City. The study commends that these school administrators as well as parents ought to offer all the necessary support required by students such as scholastic materials as well as encourage, motivate, and regularly monitor students in their studies as this would influence an improvement in retention of students in institutions offering universal high schooling within Masaka City.