Abstract:
Community participation is an important trend in the social and developmental
uplift of societies, nations and states. Community participation in education was
encouraged in the whole world in order to assist the governments and education
authorities in improvement of educational institutions. Government of Pakistan and
provincial government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (Pakistan) were endeavoring to involve
communities in education for the same purposes. Community participatory organizations
such as Parents Teachers councils (PTCs), Schools Management Committees (SMCs),
and Parents Teachers Associations (PTAs) were formed in all of the public sector schools
under the directions of federal and provincial governments through out the country. For
this purpose, rules regulations were framed for running of such community participatory
bodies, and some financial support was also granted each year to schools to be spent on
the consultation of such community participatory organizations. The objectives of the
study were (i) to see the involvement of communities in schools; (ii) to investigate the
level of awareness of people about the importance of community participation in schools;
(iii) to judge the contributions of communities to schools and (iv) to propose new ideas in
community participation. Data were collected from 1200 respondents including
Educational Managers of department, Heads of schools, Chairmen of Parents Teachers
Councils, Teachers and Parents of the students of 10th classes from five different districts
of the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Five questionnaires were used to collect data
from the respondents. Chi-square test was applied, and it was found that in most of the
aspects, the community participation in educational institutions of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
was effective, while in some of the cases it was ineffective. It is recommended that (i)
proper planning is necessary for popularizing the concept of community participation,
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(ii) awareness campaigns should be accelerated, (iii) proper trainings for elected members
of community must be arranged and (iv)media should be used in activation of such
participation.
