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A study was conducted to examine parental involvement's effects on primary school students' academic performance. The objectives were; to determine the effects of parental involvement on primary school student's academic performance in District Sheikhupura; to compare academic achievements between girls and boys at the primary level; to find out which type of parental involvement most effect on student's academic achievement. The nature was descriptive comparative study. The study population was enrolled in all public primary schools (girls and boys) in district Sheikhpura. The sample consisted of 800 primary school students (girls and boys). There were 24 public schools in total; of which 400 were girls and 400 were boys' students. Thirty-three students from each school were randomly selected. The 5-point Likert scale was developed. Based on the item analysis, 20 items were selected. The reliability of Cronbach's alpha was measured to be (r=0.862). There were six types of parental involvement. Research questions were analyzed using different analytical techniques such as percentages, frequencies, and means, standard deviations, and independent-samples t-tests. A regression analysis of the effect of parental involvement on academic performance showed that the first, second, and sixth categories of parental involvement (parenting, communication, and collaboration) had a significant impact on academic performance. On the other hand, there was no significant effect of parental involvement on third-, fourth-, and fifth-category (volunteering, home-study, and decision-making) on academic performance. The outcome shows that girls perform better in school than boys. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study was designed to identify the misconceptions of the students in learning mathematics at primary level. For this, curriculum of mathematics from class I to IV was used to develop a test inclusive of all the conceptual areas of mathematics from class I to Class IV. The curriculum of class V was left out because the sample students were planned to take into the study who were studying in class V. Twelve sample schools from Faisalabad district were selected randomly equal in number from all the three tehsils of Faisalabad. Test was conducted personally by the researchers. There were eight conceptual areas determined and included in the test viz. Numbers, Operations on Numbers, Fractions, Operations on Fractions, Decimals, Measurement, Information Handling and Geometry. The data collected from the all the students of class V of the selected sample schools, and 248 students took part in the exercise. Multi items were developed in each of the areas with different difficulties in order to have an idea of which of the selected eight areas was posing threat of misconceptions amongst the sample students. The data were analyzed using SPSS. Item-wise and gender-wise analyses was conducted to identify misconceptions and errors students committed and also to find out whether there was uniformity gender-wise or otherwise. The analyses disclosed that almost are the areas were having abandon of the errors and misconceptions and hence the achievement remained very low (mean score remained within 6.2 to 16.1 out of 51). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study adopts a qualitative approach to investigate the major reasons of academic failure at primary level in urban public schools in Pakistan. A group of experienced school teachers (N=12) teaching at primary level in public schools of Rawalpindi city were selected as the key informants of the study. Semi-structured, open-ended interviews were conducted with participant teachers during school hours. Grounded theory approach was used for data analysis. The thematic analysis of the interviews of participant teachers revealed three main reasons for academic failure of students at primary level in urban public schools in Pakistan, which were further divided into sub categories in accordance with the teachers' perceptions. The three main factors that came out as a result of analysis are family, school and student. The participant teachers were of the view that these factors have not contributed to the academic failure namely, but they all markedly influenced this phenomenon at different stages. In the end, some useful reform measures for improvement of the quality of primary education in Pakistan were presented as proposed by the participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]