Policy Guidelines in Public Private Partnership and the Provision of Quality Education in Lay Private Secondary Schools in the South –West Region, Cameroon

Abstract

The main objective of this study was to investigate the extent to which adequate state policy guidelines can affect the provision of quality education in lay private institutions in the South West Region of Cameroon. This objective was transformed into research question and hypothesis. Based on the nature of this study, research question and hypothesis, the simple random sampling, purposive and convenience techniques were used to get the selected schools, proprietors, principals and teachers in the South West Region. The sample of the study was made up of eighty (80) proprietors, eighty (80) principals and two thousand one hundred and eighty one teachers from the selected lay private secondary schools and 20 Regional Pedagogic inspector making a total of two thousand three hundred and sixty five (2,365) respondents. The study made use of quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection that is, a questionnaire with likert scale items for both principals and teachers. The Cronbach Alpha test was used to test for consistency and the reliability coefficient for teachers which was 0.879, principals 0.731, proprietors 0.834 and that for regional pedagogic inspectors was 0.896. Findings showed that state policy guidelines have a very significant, positive and strong effect on the provision of quality education in lay private secondary schools. Therefore, the null hypothesis was rejected and the alternative hypothesis which states that there is a significant effect of policy guidelines on the provision of quality education in lay private secondary schools was accepted. The positive sign implied that quality of education for lay private secondary schools is more likely to increase when the state policy guidelines are adequate and more likely to decrease when the state policy guiding them is inadequate.