Learning Opportunities of Physical Education at Primary and Secondary Schools in Amhara Regional State of Ethiopia

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the learning opportunities of physical education at primary and secondary schools in Amhara  regional state of Ethiopia. The accessibility and opportunity on physical education program in schools were not equally treated as well. In  this work, the researchers examined the level of opportunity to learn quality physical education program. Descriptive survey research  design was employed. One sample t-test were used to compare the average accessibility and opportunity of adequacy of equipment,  accessibility of equipments, safeness of equipment, safety of facility, sufficiency of facility and access of ICT with standard value. 590  schools were selected by simple random sampling technique from the total population of 5171 primary and secondary schools in the  study by calculating with sample determination formula. The data were gathered by questionnaire, deep interview and observation  checklist as tools. Method of data analysis applied terms of mean, standard deviation and t- test with P – value of less than 0.001 by using  SPSS version 21 software. Therefore, the researcher drawn the following major findings; The average opportunity of adequacy of  equipment (mean= 2.45, SD=1.25, p-value<0.001), accessibility of equipment’s(mean= 2.49, SD=1.22, p-value<0.001), safeness of  equipment (mean= 2.45, SD=1.15, pvalue<0.001), safety of facility(mean= 2.64, SD=1.33, p-value<0.01), sufficiency of facility(mean= 2.52,  SD=1.29, p-value<0.001) and access of ICT (mean= 1.87, SD=1.18, p-value<0.001) were significantly lower than the standard value. The  result showed that average of accessibility and opportunity on physical education program in the study was below the standard. So that  the researchers concluded that the primary and secondary schools have less opportunities and accessibilities’ of physical education learning facilities like sport equipment and sport fields in general. Therefore the researchers recommended that the regional education  bureau would consider maximizing the opportunities and accessibilities in terms of sport equipment, facilities, sport related ICT and  safety measures.