FEMALE TEACHERS AND GIRLS’ ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT: A CASE OF POKHARA SUB METROPOLITAN

Abstract

The aim of the study is to explore the statistical relationships between female teachers and girls’ academic achievement. The government of Nepal has emphasized to increase the number of female teachers through the policy of hiring at least one female teacher in every primary school. The logic behind the policy was guided by the concept that female teachers can bring huge influence on girl’s education by increasing enrollment, motivating them and improving their learning achievement. So whether the gendered role model in primary level school can bring improvement in learning achievement of girls or not was the main concern in the study. The research questions of the study were to find the trend of sex wise academic achievement, subject wise performance when taught by female teachers and the perceptions between girls and female teachers about the practiced characteristics of a female teacher as a role model. In this study, I employed the quantitative methodology relying on post positivistic paradigm. In this survey research design, Pokhara Sub-metropolitan of Kaski district was my study site. I collected annual examination records of 5965 students of five years (2008 – 2012 A.D) from 37 community schools through census method. The structured questionnaire was administered to 565 grade five girl students ii and 165 teachers. The Statistical Packages to Social Science (SPSS) was used for data entry and analysis. Descriptive analysis and t-test were the statistical tools used in this study. The findings of my study revealed that there was majority of female teachers in primary level. The study found that girls of grade five outperformed the boys over the five years in Nepali, English, Science and Social Studies. Thus the girls excelled in literary subjects and lagged behind in numerical. The study concluded that the girl achieve better scores in Nepali, Science and Social studies when taught by female teachers. There was no statistically significant result in Maths. The study found that the girls perceived their female teacher as a role model in terms of punctuality, appearance, and motivation. Regarding the female teachers’ behavior, they loved students, helped them, polite and cared for weak students but physically punished students sometimes. Most of them didn’t prepare their daily lesson plans and less used the teaching materials in class. Thus corporal punishment and lack of professionalism to some extent in female teachers prevented them to be role model to all girl students. In overall, the girls had very positive perception about their female teachers. However the study strongly implies that female teachers can really play a contributing role for improving girls’ achievement if they respect child rights by reducing the practice of corporal punishment towards them, creating a child friendly environment in school and maintain professionalism to be a good teacher.