A Comparative Analysis of Quality Service Education; a Case of Chipinge Urban Secondary Schools in Zimbabwe

Abstract

Of recent there has been an unprecedented increase in the number of privately owned secondary schools in the town of Chipinge, Zimbabwe. It is surprising that parents seem to prefer to send their children to these newly established schools instead of the already existing public secondary schools. The thrustof this paper was to carry out a comparative service quality analysis between the public and private secondary schools in this town. The study sought to establish reasons behind these two trends; the proliferation of private owned schools as well as the preference by the parents to send their children to these little known and newly established private secondary schools. Six schools (three private and the other three public) were involved in this study and respondents included 2 education officers, 6school heads, 12 teachers, 12 parents and 12 students. These schools were purposively selected such that both private and public secondary schools were represented. The study utilised open ended questionnaires and unstructured interviews to collect data from Education Officers, school heads, teachers, parents and students. The study established that the emerging privately owned schools lack quality in terms of inputs, processes and outputs (resources, the teaching process and the results).Ironically, these schools are relatively expensive and yet parents prefer sending their children to these schools. The only reasonable explanation to such decisions by parents would be that fees are paid on a monthly basis; therefore, parents are comfortable paying fees bit by bit than paying the whole amount at once. The study therefore recommends using different quality service education monitoring instruments in both private and public schools.