Determinants of students’ enrolment in Home Economics programme in senior high schools in Ghana

Students’ enrolment in Home Economics programme in Senior High Schools (SHSs) in Ghana has been low in recent times. This has become a concern for major stakeholder in education. This study examined the determinants of students’ enrolment in Home Economics programme in SHSs in Ghana. The cross-sectional descriptive survey design was employed for the conduct of the study. The target population comprised first year Home Economics students from 16 selected SHSs in three administrative regions (i.e., Western, Central and Greater Accra Region). A simple random sampling technique (lottery method) was employed to sample 4 schools in the Western Region and 6 each from Central and Greater Accra Region. A census sampling technique was then utilised to include all Home Economics first-year students in the selected schools. A sample size of 1,136 students from 16 schools participated in the study. Data was collected using a questionnaire. Binary logistic regression analysis was employed to analyse the data using 1,000 bootstrap samples with 95% confidence interval with bias-corrected accelerated and 2,000,000 seed for Mersenne Twister. It was revealed that factors which significantly influenced students’ decision to enrol in the Home Economics programme were interest, job prospects, fathers, teachers, BECE grade, family relatives, and perceived workload among others. The study recommended that management of basic schools in Ghana should organise educative programmes to enlighten students and teachers on vocational and technical related courses and as such arouse students’ interest in enrolling in such programmes.