Teachnology: Drop-out prevention by increasing parent involvement through text messaging

Abstract

The high drop-out rate is one of the most serious problems in the Philippines. Many local pieces of research have been written and assessed how the present interventions are delivered. However, little efforts were made to devise low- cost yet sustainable interventions particularly for rural educators. Researchers conducted this study aimed at preventing the learners from dropping-out by increasing parent involvement through text messaging. This is a single group pretest-posttest study conducted among Grade 10 learners, considered as at risk of dropping out, at a rural school in the southern Philippines. The intervention included constant updating of the parents on the attendance, performance, and progress of the learners through text messaging. Wilcoxon signed-rank test was used to determine the effect of the intervention which was found to be significant at z=-238, p=0.017. It is believed that the findings of this paper are relevant and useful to school administrators, parents, and most especially rural teachers.