The contribution of school curriculum committee in implementing and improving secondary school curriculum: the case of metekel zone secondary schools

Abstract

The purpose of the study was treats the contributions of the school curriculum committee in implementing and improving the curriculum and to examine major possible challenges that the school curriculum committee face while exercising their duties in Government Secondary schools of Metekel Zone. To accomplish this purpose, the study employed a descriptive survey method, which is supplemented and enriched by qualitative data. The study was carried out in eight randomly selected secondary schools of Metekel Zone. Then 99 teachers and 32 school curriculum committee were selected using simple random sampling techniques. All 8 school principals and 7 woreda supervisors were also involved in the study for interviewing. Questionnaire was the main instrument of data collection. Interview was also utilized to substantiate the data gained through the questionnaire. Frequency, percentage and chi-square were utilized to analyze the questionnaire. The qualitative data obtained through interview were analyzed and the result was used to enrich the quantitative findings. The results of the study revealed that the school curriculum committee contributions in facilitating the condition of curriculum implementation and improvement were ineffective. School curriculum committees were involved in the hard task of facilitating condition without having preceding encouragements. The cooperation of school curriculum committee with parents, community and principals on discussing with teachers after classroom visit, initiating teachers to conduct action research was ineffective and their plans were not participatory. Furthermore, the study revealed that: lack of training and experience sharing session, work load of committee members, lack of material and incentive support, misunderstanding of committee about their roles, unavailability of resource, lack of ICT, insufficient fund were those factors which hinders effective implementation of secondary school curriculum, Finally recommendations were drawn based on the above findings. The point of the recommendations include: awareness on the part of school curriculum committee, principals, supervisors and teachers through seminars, workshops and discussion about the different activities of curriculum implementation process in order to bring skill development of teachers and improve the implementation of secondary curriculum. Moreover, suggestions were forwarded to solve the factors that hinder implementation of curriculum