The satisfaction of secondary vocational school pupils in the capital city of Prague

Introduction and theoretical framework

Schools are one of the most important social institutions for most students, and the environment in which students learn can influence their development and satisfaction (Aldridge, 2016). Pupils are the center of any educational system. Without pupils, there would be no principals, teachers, educators, secretaries, janitors, cafeteria staff, etc. in the school. Without the school, inspectors, officials, founders, etc. would not have a job. No matter how students are defined as customers in the school, it is certain that the school cannot do without students. Pupils spend a large part of the day at school. It is therefore important that they feel good at school, that they are satisfied, that they gain new stimuli and experiences at school. Due to the action of many factors, students form a relationship that affects their approach to education.

However, student satisfaction is not a homogenous and sufficiently researched construct. Findings (Wiers-Jenssen, 2002) support criticism and show that student satisfaction is a concept strongly influenced by a number of contextual factors, independent of teaching quality. As an argument against equating the student's satisfaction with the quality of teaching, Richardson (2005) also used a reference to the research results of psychologists dealing with the intellectual development of students (Baxter Magolda, 1992), whose findings confirm that intellectual development is associated with a certain discomfort.

Emphasis on student satisfaction in schools is typical especially for the American environment, which is why one can find a number of studies investigating the connection between the emotional states of students and their educational results (e.g. Jones, 2015; Rae and MacConville, 2015; Valiente, Swanson and Eisenberg, 2012). The studies carried out not only confirmed that there is a connection between the satisfaction of pupils and their academic success, but that further research in this area is very important. Quality schools look for all opportunities and resources to constantly improve. If schools focus on the satisfaction of their students and look for ways to influence this satisfaction, the level of their results will increase.

Corradino and Fogarty (2016) dealt with the consequences of positive emotions. They found that the amount of positive emotions in the school environment is correlated with a higher level of student engagement, while negative emotions are associated with a lower level of engagement. They draw attention to the state of "Flow", which is defined as purposeful preoccupation, during which a person fully controls his emotions, which help him to perform better in his work (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997). A satisfied school is a concept that assumes the existence of a supportive climate in the school. It is based on the premise that there is nothing more important than the positive attachment to the school of both pupils and teachers, because quality education and responsible work also develop from this basis.

Lynch (2012) states that pupils' satisfaction with their school is a sign of a quality school. It seems that the strongest factors influencing student satisfaction with school are interpersonal factors, which together with a functional family and positive relationships with classmates and teachers form a formula for maximum satisfaction and happiness (Zullig, 2011). On the contrary, if students perceive school as an unhappy and hostile place, their experiences at school are a significant source of stress. These resources can be divided into four categories: physical environment (eg repetitive tasks, lack of safety), assessment (eg school work, competitions, tests), management (eg daily structure, discipline) and interpersonal relationships between students and teachers (Leonard, 2004).

The results of the questionnaire survey in secondary schools conducted in 2017 by the agency Median, the results of the international survey PISA 2018, TIMSS 2015 and the current International Research Study on the Health and Lifestyle of Children and Schoolchildren HBSC 2020 fairly uniformly state that Czech pupils are the least satisfied with school in Europe. The most common reason for their dissatisfaction is the feeling that the content of the lesson will not be useful to them outside the school premises. The second and third most common reason concerns the bad attitude of teachers towards pupils. Secondary school students are convinced that teachers do not know how to teach the material, or they behave arrogantly towards them. WHO states in the latest HBSC report that school popularity in OECD countries is decreasing year-on-year and the pressure on school performance is increasing. Younger students perceive school better, feel more support from teachers and less pressure to perform. This is also confirmed by Mareš (2010). Pupils' satisfaction with school decreases with increasing age (Inchley et al., 2020).

Methodology

The aim of the study was to confirm or refute the findings regarding the fact that Czech pupils are not satisfied at school, based on a sample of students from Prague secondary vocational schools. During the research, four assumptions were formulated on the basis of the above-mentioned sources, which verified the degree of satisfaction of the pupils with the quality of teaching, teachers, technical equipment and the school in general.

Research sample A total of 3052 pupils from seven secondary public schools established by the capital city of Prague were involved in the survey. Schools of various sizes were approached, preparing pupils in the form of full-time study in fields of category "H", i.e. fields of education providing secondary education with an educational certificate, "L", i.e. fields of education providing secondary education with a school-leaving exam, where the education also includes vocational training and fields of education of extension study, and "M", i.e. fields of education providing secondary education with matriculation exam. In view of the fact that the investigation took place during the closure of schools due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the principals of individual schools were directly addressed and a random selection of the sample was not created. This fact affected the representativeness of the sample and is reflected in the discussion.

Table 1 Overview of participating schools and their characteristics

Research Methods

A translated standardized questionnaire was used for data collection, which has been used since 2011 to determine student satisfaction and the quality of secondary vocational schools in Lower Saxony (Handbuch: Schulisches Controlling, 2011). The questionnaire contained 41 items, which were divided into two parts. Questions 1 - 24 ascertained pupils' satisfaction with teachers and teaching, questions 25 - 41 verified pupils' satisfaction with technical equipment, premises, school infrastructure and ascertained pupils' attitudes towards the school. Respondents answered on a four-point Likert scale. The questionnaire was professionally translated by an interpreter from the German language and checked by an approved high school teacher of the German language. The questionnaire for pupils was piloted in November and December 2019 on a sample of 741 pupils of the Prague secondary vocational school. Since the German manual for the questionnaire did not contain the division of items into more detailed factors that would take into account the focus of individual questions in order to verify mutual relationships, structure and reliability of the questionnaire, an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was performed on the pilot data using SPSS v.21 software. Based on Kaiser's rule, nine factors with a value greater than 1 (53% variance) were identified, the five strongest factors (42% variance) were named according to the items they saturate, indexes were created from them (teaching quality, teacher quality, school, technical equipment and climate) and the internal consistency parameter was calculated for them. The reliability of individual indexes of the questionnaire is shown in Table 2.

Table 2 Reliability of questionnaire indexes for pupils

The main research was carried out from October to November 2020. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, both questionnaires were entered under identical conditions in the form of an electronic form in the Microsoft Office 365 program, students filled out the questionnaire via mobile phones. The obtained data were processed and analyzed using the methods of descriptive statistics. Basic calculations of average values, relative frequencies and mutual relations of answers in individual factors were performed. Differences were also sought in individual questions.

Results From table 3, which presents the calculations of all monitored indices, it can be deduced that in all monitored indices the average index is above the middle of the scale, which is 2.5. Below the middle of the scale, pupils did not answer any of the monitored schools.

Table 3 Overall statistics of all monitored indexes

From the comparison of the averages of pupils' answers in the individual indices, it is evident that pupils are most satisfied with questions connected with the quality of teachers (3.33). On the contrary, pupils are the least satisfied with the course of the lesson (2.99). To find out how the individual data are scattered around the average value of the set, the variance was calculated. The biggest variance in the answers was for questions about school equipment (0.05). On the contrary, the smallest variance was in questions related to teaching, teachers and climate.

On the data with the student unit, correlation calculations "r" were performed using the Pearson correlation coefficient. Table 4 shows these calculations.

Table 4 Correlation of partial indices of the student questionnaire

Discussion

In all monitored indexes, the average index is above the middle of the scale, which is 2.5. Pupils rated the quality of teachers (3.33) and their general satisfaction with the school (3.23) the best. Pupils rated the quality of education the worst (2.99). The students of school number two expressed the greatest satisfaction with the school. These students ranged from 3.15 to 3.50 in all monitored indexes, so their satisfaction is significantly above the scale limit. School two is a large secondary vocational school located in the outskirts of the capital city of Prague, which has been preparing students since 2002 in five educational, mainly administrative programs. On the contrary, the least satisfaction (2.99) was expressed by pupils at school number one. It is one of the large secondary vocational schools preparing students mainly in technically oriented educational programs. Even here, however, the overall satisfaction of pupils is significantly above the 2.5 mark. Calculations of the correlations "r" between the individual indexes of the questionnaire were performed on data with the school unit and showed a strong linear dependence between the individual indexes. The strongest dependence (0.925) is between the indices "school" and "teacher", then the indices "school" and "technical equipment" (0.851) and "school" and "climate" (0.825). On the contrary, there is a low dependence between the indices "technical equipment" and "teaching" (0.218).

Conclusions

The aim of the study was to verify their level of satisfaction with their school, with the quality of teaching, teachers and technical equipment of the school, based on a sample of students from secondary vocational schools in Prague. As mentioned above, the satisfaction of pupils at school is still an insufficiently researched construct, which is influenced by a number of contextual factors independent of the quality of teaching. The results found on a sample of secondary vocational school pupils in the capital city of Prague did not confirm the original assumptions formulated on the basis of the findings of the agency Median (2017), PISA (2018), TIMSS (2015) and HBSC (2020). Knowing the limits of inferential statistics, the methods of investigation and selection used, and the size of the sample, however, it is necessary to interpret the results very carefully. The conducted study is only an initial probe verifying negative interpretations of pupils' satisfaction with school in the Czech educational environment. Without further follow-up research and taking into account the above study limits, the results cannot be interpreted causally. Nevertheless, the results are interesting, because compared to studies published so far, they bring contrasting results and raise a number of questions that would be appropriate to investigate further.

Author: PhDr. Roman Liška, Ph.D. The author studied single-field pedagogy at the Faculty of Philosophy of Charles University in Prague and education management at the Faculty of Pedagogy of Charles University in Prague. He completed his doctoral studies at the Faculty of Education of the Charles University in the field of pedagogy. He has been the director of the public Secondary Vocational School for EU Administration in Prague for more than seventeen years. He works externally at the Faculty of Education of Charles University, where he teaches quality management in education, management skills and economics in education.

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