The role of community involvement in enhancing infrastructural support and its impact on the quality of public primary school pupils' education in rural areas in the South West Region of Cameroon

Work The study aimed at investigating community involvement in infrastructural support and its impact on the quality of public primary school pupils’ education in rural areas in the South West Region of Cameroon. The theoretical underpinning of this study was informed by Michael Shuman’s Theory of Community Based Financing (2021) and Epstein’sTheory of overlapping Spheres. The concurrent research design was adopted for the study. The target population of the study was made up of 635 participants teachers, head teachers and community leaders in rural areas in Fako and Kupe Muanenguba divisions. The accessible population consisted of 249 respondents. The sample size was made up of 138 respondents. Participants were sampled using the purposive, stratified snow ball, convenient and simple random sampling. Questionnaire and interview guide were instruments used to collect data for the study. Reliability coefficient values for the questionnaire were analyzed using SPSS version 27 with the help of descriptive and inferential statistics while qualitative data were analyzed thematically. Findings showed that majority of teachers 78.1% (64) and head teachers 70.8% (17) indicated that the community does not support the school in terms of infrastructure (classrooms, toilets and other physical facilities). Moreover, the lack of infrastructure as revealed by the community leaders could also act as a demotivating factor preventing many trained teachers to stay in rural areas and that community provision of infrastructure have a significant and strong impact on the quality of public primary school pupils’ education in rural areas (R-value 0.658**, p-value≤0.001) supported with a very high explanatory power 0f 90.3%. In other words, it was predicted that adequate community provision of infrastructure would go a long way to enhance the quality without involvement of community leaders, lack of communication from school head to factors reported for causing community unwillingness to massively engage in supporting schools in their rural communities. On this note, inclusive decision-making, cordial relationship between school head and community leaders, government empowerment of communities to foster their involvement in supporting schools in their rural communities, good management and communication from school head and motivation of teachers were ways forward to enhance community involvement.