School consolidation policy and implementation

Research methodology:

Substantive content qualitative analysis focusing on the patterns that can be

observed in the trajectory of the school consolidation were used for this research. In spite of

the fact that qualitative content analysis was traditionally being used only within the social

sciences, it has as of late ended up being very popular in other scholastic areas as well. The

bland and intrigue nature of qualitative research has made it easier to use for the purpose of

this research as well. Qualitative research allows the researcher to openly adjust the steps of

the research project. In the United States, content analysis was first used as an analytic

technique at the beginning of the 20th century (Barcus, 1959). In this paper, qualitative

content analysis is used as a research method for the subjective interpretation of the content

of text data through the systematic classification process of coding and identifying themes or

patterns.

This research paper focuses on inductive approach to qualitative analysis, as it

offers us a way to describe how implementation of school consolidation policy is based on

the level of education that the school offers and the area it is present in. unlike the deductive

approach, which imposes a framework on the research pattern, in inductive approach the

researcher develops a framework that describes the occurring patterns in the best way.

(Zaphiris, P, Pfeil, U., 2009). In this way, the categories are data-driven and the overall code

scheme describes the patterns and content of the school consolidation under investigation.

The date for this qualitative content analysis is taken from school consolidation

lists document provided by the Ministry of Education (MOE). The data shows the list of

schools that got consolidated each year from 2018-2020. Ministry of Education official

website was found to be an adequate source of data for several reasons. First of all, these
records were publicly available for the all internet users and there was no need to register in

order to read them. Furthermore, this website is a government controlled medium, hence the

data in it was considered to be authentic. Taking all this in account, it was deduced that the

MOE website can be treated as public space where research data can be collected without

having to achieve informed consent before data collection.

The raw data from the MOE website was analyzed on the basis of meaning as a

unit of analysis compared to that which is on basis of sentences or context. The reasons for

this decision were that coding with the sentence as the unit of analysis would mean to

overlook the overall meaning of a message. For example, one sentence viewed and coded

separately would ignore the context within the message, in which the sentence was written. In

contrast, using the whole message as the unit of analysis was seen as too shallow. Sometimes,

people would include several topics within one long message and putting the whole message

into one code would mean that important distinctions and details of the message get lost.

(Zaphiris, P, Pfeil, U., 2009). Thus, the data was analyzed on basis of meaning.

In this analysis paper, the raw data was coded from oldest to latest. This first set

of data that was coded was from 2018 and the related information regarding that of the level

of education provided in the consolidated schools and the gender of students were tabulated.

The same set of data was collected for year 2019 and 202 as well. Each set data was analyzed

for the patterns involved in the implementation of school consolidation. The limitation of this

research process was that the data provided by the government website was mainly for the

public schools and there was no mention of the private schools.

Research Questions:

The research questions that will be answered in the analysis paper are listed

below:
 1. What effect does the level of school have on implementation of school

consolidation policy?

2. Does year of implementation have any affect on the number of schools

consolidated?

3. Does the implementation of school consolidation policy is affected by any

geographical factor?

Detailed findings:

This data is analyzed on the basis of three factors which are the consolidation

year, school level and the school regions. This first thing that will be evaluated is the

consolidation year. It was noted that year 2019 showed greatest number of consolidation

whereas year 2020 showed the least number of consolidations. This pattern could be for

examined for a number of reasons. The most logical explanation that arises is the awareness

regarding this new policy and effect of global pandemic on the implementation. This policy

was released in 2018. During this year, the management had a very little awareness about this

consolidation process and how it will affect the students as well as the teachers. This is

because the policy makers did not confer with the school managements before releasing this

policy. The parents were worried how this will affect the education of their children whereas

the teachers and management of school were concerned how this policy will affect their role

and their rank. Hence, the number of school consolidation was seen to be relatively lower

than that of the coming year. In the coming year of 2019, the awareness regarding this new

educational policy of school consolidation increased as the people saw that this did not in any

way negatively affected the education of students and the rank of teachers was also not

changed. This caused the number of consolidated schools in 2019 to increase to 505 as shown

in table 2. Now, according to the trend the number of consolidated schools in 2020 should

have been greater than 505 but we saw a sharp decline to 195. This decline could be due to
unprecedented threat of Covid-19 virus. The global pandemic made it very difficult to

implement any policy as most of the activities came to sudden halt in that year. Thus, we see

a very large decrease in number of consolidated schools.

The second thing under investigation is the level of consolidated schools. It is

seen that number of elementary schools consolidated are much higher than the number of

middle and high schools in all three years. This could also be due to a lot of different reasons.

Chief among them is very high number of students in elementary schools as compared to

middle and high schools. Most students decide to drop out of schools after elementary

education due to various reasons. There are many problems in catering the large number of

students in elementary schools such as staffing issues. School consolidation is the most valid

option to get rid of all these problems. In high schools and middle schools, there is very little

staffing problems and thus, the need for consolidation does not arise. Another reason for

more elementary schools being consolidated might be a greater need of a small teacher to

student ratio in higher education as compared to that required in elementary education.

The third pattern that emerged from this research is the greater number of

consolidated schools in central region. This might be because of greater population in the

central regions and thus, a need to arrange schooling opportunities for a lot of students. It is

demographically, socially and economically much more beneficial to have consolidation in

schools within these regions of higher population. Thus, this pattern emerges.