ASSESSING THE EXTENT OF IMPLEMENTATION OF THE LANGUAGE POLICY IN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE PRIMARY SCHOOLS IN RIVERS STATE

This study investigates the extent of Implementation of the Language Policy in Public and  Private Primary Schools in Rivers State. Three research questions and three hypotheses  guided the study. The descriptive survey design was adopted for the study. The population  of the study consisted of all the 236, 121 public and private primary school teachers in Rivers  State. The sample was 400 primary school teachers in Rivers State selected using stratified  random sampling technique. The instrument for data collection was a researcher-designed questionnaire titled “Implementation of the Language Policy Questionnaire” (ILPQ). The instrument was validated by experts in the field of Language Education. A test-retest technique was used to determine the reliability of the instrument, and reliability coefficient index of 0.83 was obtained. Mean and Standard Deviation were used to answer the research questions while independent t-test was used to test the corresponding null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The findings revealed that the implementation of the language policy is low in both private and public schools in Rivers State although, there is no significant difference in the extent to which the policy is implemented in both public and private schools. Also, the extent to which the policy is implemented in both rural and urban primary schools is low but schools in rural areas pay more attention to the implementation of the language policy than those in urban areas. It was equally revealed that teachers in both public and private primary schools demonstrated poor and lukewarm attitude towards the implementation of the language policy. It was recommended among others that government and educational authorities should establish standardised monitoring and evaluation frameworks; in urban areas children should be exposed to the language of the immediate environment they live; sensitisation programmes should be regularly organised to awaken in the teachers the consciousness of implementing the language policy.