Modeling of Academic Achievement of Primary School Students in Ethiopia Using Bayesian Multilevel Approach

Abstract

This study aims to explore Bayesian multilevel modeling to investigate variations of average academic achievement of grade eight school students. A sample of 636 students is randomly selected from 26 private and government schools by a two-stage stratified sampling design. Bayesian method is used to estimate the fixed and random effects. Input and process quality indicators of education such as student to class ratio, student to teacher ratio, availability of teaching learning resources at school, teaching methods, and standard of course curriculum are found to be significantly affecting the academic achievement of the students. The effects of student level covariates: absence from class, academic motivation, academic self concept, study time, family income, mother's education, parents' employment status, work demand at home, and parent's follow-up of child are significantly varying from school to school. The results show that a large proportion of academic achievement variation is accounted to between schools. It is interesting to found out that the within school variation is very high for government schools while the between school variation is very high for private schools. There is uniformity across the government schools with high individual differences among students. However, there is lesser uniformity across the private schools with lesser individual differences of students. The findings in this study indicate that private schools are in a better position in maintaining quality of education at grade eight. Efficient academic management is needed at the government schools that can improve quality of education at the level.

Factors Affecting the Academic Achievement of the Students in Community Campuses

“…The overall mean values being less than 3 suggest a strong consensus among respondents about the positive impact of these factors on academic success, except for the use of ICT in the classroom, which appears to be perceived less positively. These findings are in line with previous research by Walberg et al (1986), Astin (1984), Fraser et al (1987), Fullarton (2002), Chhetri (2022), Sebro and Goshu (2017), Singh et al (2016Singh et al ( ), alshammari et al (2017, Dhakal (2020), and Al Husaini and Shukor (2022).…”

“…The findings emphasize the substantial influence of these factors on students' academic performance, underscoring the pivotal role teachers play in shaping educational experiences. This is consistent with prior research by Abdulghani et al (2014), Akessa and Dhufera (2015), Sebro and Goshu (2017), Azis andMuda (2019), alshammari et al (2017), Dhakal (2020), Ghimire (2023). The tables from 1 to 6 indicate that home-related factors, facilities available on campus, teaching-learning environment and resources, personal habits of students, and institutional-related factors significantly affect the academic achievement of students in the university…”

“…The study highlights mean values and an overall mean value for these factors, ranging from 1.53 to 2.84, all below 3, indicating a strong consensus the overall mean values being less than 3 for these factors suggest a strong consensus among respondents about their positive impact on the academic achievement of students in the university. This aligns with previous research by Walberg et al (1986), Astin (1984), Fraser et al (1987), Fullarton (2002), Chhetri (2022), Sebro and Goshu (2017), Singh et al (2016Singh et al ( ), alshammari et al (2017, Dhakal (2020), and Al Husaini and Shukor (2022), as well as Azis and Muda (2019) and Ghimire (2023).…”

“…According to Sebro and Goshu (2017), student performance is linked to learning opportunities, teaching methods, teacher-student relationships, class connections, and the presence of teaching-learning resources within the school, additionally, considering that having books at home was not significant. Likewise, Alshammari et al's (2017) study revealed that teacher-related, students-related, school-related, home-related factors affect the academic performance of students.…”

Mediation effect of attitude and factors associated with practice towards corona virus disease-19 transmission prevention among students, Southern Ethiopia: - Generalized structural equation modeling approach.

“…The sample size is . As the study is going to be conducted using a strati ed multistage cluster random sampling technique, to adjust for the loss of representativeness due to the sampling technique chosen, the design effect was calculated using the formula (19) where m is average number of clusters which in our case is the number of private and public preparatory and high schools in Hosanna town ( m= 8) and 𝞺 is between schools variation and which was found to be 0.01 from study conducted in Hawassa using both private and public schools (20). So, However, considering the generalizability of nding and heterogeneity of study participants as well as to increase the power and precision of the study, a design effect (DEFF) of 1.5 was used in the nal sample size estimation.…”