Academic Failure at Primary Level: A Qualitative Approach to Urban Public Schools 

objective:     Investigate the major reasons of academic failure of students at primary level in urban public schools, in accordance with the teacher’s perceptions. 

research question:   What are the major reasons of academic failure of students at primary level specifically in the context of urban public schools?

theoretical framework:

In Pakistan, where poverty is a major social problem, when a student fails in some grade, his/her parents do not agree to spend money for an extra year. As a result, majority of the students leave the school, thus increasing dropout rate. Besides this, those who repeat the same grade are subject to continuous criticism of fellow students as well as teachers because primary grade teachers in Pakistan are generally unaware of the self-esteem and other emotional factors having significant effects on the personality of students. It was therefore needed to identify the major reasons of academic failure of students at primary level, especially in the context of a developing country like Pakistan. For this purpose,Public schools in Rawalpindi city were selected for getting data as they serve majority of economically deprived population, because those having better socio-economic status, living in this area send their children to private schools. moreover, the people having low socio-economic status also deprived of basic educational facilities especially those living in urban areas of Rawalpindi city. the fast growing urban population (generally because of recent migration trend of rural people to urban areas and inflation), faces many problems including poor quality of primary education. in this context, the researcher decided to investigate the major reasons of academic failure at primary level in urban public schools.

 The epistemological position of the researcher suggested that for generating in-depth data, she would have to interact with the primary school teachers as key informants, talk to them, listen to them and gain access to their insights and articulations in order to capture their “lived experiences” (Hesse-Biber & Leavy, 2006, p.317).

The rationale of using interview technique is perhaps the assumption that “individuals have unique and important knowledge about the social world that is ascertainable through verbal communication” (Hesse-Biber, & Leavy, 2006, p.119).

Alexander, K. L., Entwisle, D. R. and Horsey, C. S. (1997). From First Grade Forward: Early Foundations of High School Dropout. Sociology of Education, 70 (2), pp. 87-107. Retrieved on July 6, 2009 from http://www.jstor.org/stable/ Creswell, J. W. (2003). Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative and Mixed Methods Approaches. 2nd Ed. Sage Publications Ltd, USA. Government of Pakistan. (2006). National Education Census Pakistan, 2005. Ministry of Education, Academy of Educational Planning and Management, Statistics Division, Federal Bureau of Statistics Government of Pakistan. (2009). Pakistan Educational Statistics 2007-08. Islamabad, Academy of Educational Planning and Management, Ministry of Education. Hesse-Biber, S. N. & Leavy, P. (2006). The Practice of Qualitative Research. Sage Publications Ltd, USA. Holliday, A. (2007). Doing and Writing Qualitative Research. 2nd Ed, Sage Publications Ltd, London.