Abstract:
The purpose of the study was to find out whether primary school teachers
in both public and private primary schools in the Ketu Education District of the
Volta Region of Ghana comply with government policy on language use and
language teaching in their schools. The policy itself was examined to see if it is
fraught with any problems that make its implementation difficult.
A sample of 352 respondents was drawn from teachers and pupils in 44
selected primary schools (35 public and 9 private schools) in the district.
The data were collected through the use of questionnaires for teachers and
an interview schedule for pupils. Tabular representations, percentages,
frequencies, t-test and the chi-square test were the main statistical techniques u.;ed
to analyse the data.
Most of the teachers in the district could read and write the local language
of the area. Moreover, quite a good number of them studied a Ghanaian language
at the teacher training college. This notwithstanding, majority of the teachers,
even including those in the lower primary schools, either used the English
language or mixed medium in teaching their pupils. In fact, for vicious reason
they preferred to use the English medium throughout the primary school even
though their first language was not different from that of the pupils they taught
Teachers in the private schools were more consistent in this.
