Comparative Analysis of the Early Childhood Education in Public and Private Sector Schools

Abstract

This study was designed to compare the situation of Early Childhood
Education (ECE), provided in public and private sector schools. The
major objectives of the study were to evaluate the learning abilities of the
students who were receiving early childhood education, to study
demographic variations of students in relation with their learning ability
and to study availability of physical facilities in the public and private
sector schools for early childhood education. In this study, data of 100
respondents was collected from two distinct groups; students enrolled in
ECE and teachers teaching to ECE level. Among them 60 students and
40 teachers were included. Data was collected from the schools located
at Rawalpindi and Islamabad. In order to make a comparison between
public and private sector schools quantitative approaches was used. For
the measurement of students’ learning ability data was collected with the
help of a standardized tool developed by ASER (2014) for English,
Urdu, Math, General Knowledge and for the measurement of teachers’
perception regarding availability of physical facilities in public and
private sector schools a separate research tool was developed by the
researchers. Findings revealed that learning level of students who were
enrolled in the private schools was higher than the students enrolled in
public sector schools and girl’s studying in private schools have high
learning level than boys in public school. Results also revealed that
overall there was a lack of physical facilities for pre primary children in
both sector schools. Findings of the study would be helpful for public
and private sector schools and agencies those are working in early
childhood education. Study would be helpful in creating awareness among teachers and administrators about the importance of ECE in
relation with learning abilities of students