APPENDIX I: Declaration to consent of the school principal 2 169
5.5 School decline, school choice and learner migration 123
choice when she notes people want to be associated with successful schools so the high academic performing schools are a choice of many and as for declining schools, people are running away from them. The observations made also supports this when it is shown that parents and pupils prefer a school of choice to have good infrastructure and well maintained buildings and classrooms.
to a better performing school leading to learner migration from one school to another. (Mr Gushungo)
From Tagwinya High School, Mrs Chirandu, a Head of Department, said:
Yes there is a relationship among school decline, school choice and learner migration. You would find out that when a school is not performing well or declining goals are not being met or achieved you would find that school would not become a choice to parents who will be aware of the situation of that situation. (Mrs Chirandu)
In support of the above, a parent from Umambo High School, Mr Chipiri, said:
Once the school has declined its performance, pass rates and infrastructure parents shun that school. Once the school declines, the standards of the school will begin to decline and also its enrolment of both teachers and learners. So there is a strong link between the two school decline and school choice. Learners will be migrating from one school to another considering the idea of pass rates, infrastructure, and good behaviour provided by the other schools which will be lacking at the current school or the schools they are migrating from. So it is interlinked to the idea of declining of a school and the choice the parents have and the movement of pupils from one school to another. (Mr Chipiri)
In addition, at Tagwinya High School, a parent, Mr Ndira, said:
Yes there is a link. If the school is producing poor results the children are likely to move from that school to another better performing school. If it happens that the school is deteriorating in results or the standards of teaching and learning conduciveness that school is likely to face learner migration. The parents can now make a choice because this one is having better results, let me move my children from this school to that one. The parent is going to make a choice and that choice is going to lead to migration because some certain standards that have deteriorated. (Mr Ndira)
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Literature has the following to support the link amongst school decline, school choice and learner migration identified by the participants. Gorard, Taylor and Fitz (2002) consider the notion of schools in a spiral of decline, in which less popular schools within a market system lose numbers and increase their proportion of socially disadvantaged pupils over time. In an era of raw-score performance indicators such a decline could quickly become a spiral, with disadvantage leading to poorer aggregated results, leading to less popularity and so on. This is true and in line with what the participants said. When a school is in decline its enrolment is also in decline with parents transferring their children to better performing schools and that is what the literature is noting.
In addition, Bernstein (2012) notes that public schools need greater freedom to respond to competition from other schools. Similarly, Baird (2009) notes that Low-Fee Private schools are highly responsive to parents’ demands for quality education, and are often very good at producing decent results with limited resources. This is also noted in the participants responses when they highlighted that public school are becoming less of importance in choice of parents than private schools due to their poor performance and also because they pay less than private schools they are also losing their best teaching staff to private school.
In order to improve their children’s pass rates, some parents in Zimbabwe have resorted to sending their children to higher-achieving schools, most of which are expensive, with some charging as much as US$600 to US$1 000 per term (Gordon, 1995). The sentiments expressed above underline the importance parents attach to high academic achievement. This shows that parents are willing to sacrifice their money choosing a well-performing school than sending their children to declining schools.
The observations made also showed that Umambo High School looked up to date in terms of all the things that parents consider when choosing a school for their children. The school infrastructure looked well maintained, school furniture was available to all students and computers and the internet was available which shows technological advancement on part of the school since computers and the internet are essentials for modern teaching and learning to be effective. The inclusion of sports like basketball shows improvement in the sporting part not only offering the traditional sports like soccer and net ball. The school has overall been performing well shown by the latest shields it scooped for the best A level results in the district. The school
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also offers a wide curriculum for their A level which includes Science subjects like Mathematics, Chemistry, Biology and Physics; Commercial subjects like the Management of Business, Accounting and Economics; Arts subjects like Geography, Divinity, Shona and Literature. The school is definitely a school of choice to many parents in the district many students would wish to enroll there for their advanced level. More learners are likely to migrate in to that school than migrate out and the opposite is true for Tagwinya High School, due to its declining state it will lose more learners to Umambo High School. Pupils and parents will be choosing Umambo High School over Tagwinya High School, leading to high learner migration between the two being caused by school decline.
The link amongst the three phenomena of school decline, school choice and learner migration was shown by the participants in their responses when they noted that a school in decline will lose the preferential choice of both parents and learners leading to learner migration to better performing schools. This is also supported by literature that schools which are high academic performers attract more learners from declining school leading to declining schools decreasing in learner enrolment and learner population. From the observations made, pupils from Tagwinya High School are migrating out of the school due to its decline to Umambo high school.