Educational - Ozean Publications

GENERAL IMAGEEuropean Journal of Educational Studies 2(2), 2010G 37 3.03 0.70H 57 3.20 1.11I 32 2.62 0.64Total 464 3.03 0.83A 32 2.81 0.56 Between groups 11.58 8.00 1.45 4.09 0.00B 29 3.38 0.68 Within groups 160.99 455.00 0.35C 26 2.99 0.52 Total 172.58 463.00D 110 3.15 0.58E 68 3.31 0.55F 73 2.96 0.49G 37 3.01 0.60H 57 3.21 0.79I 32 2.94 0.57Total 464 3.11 0.61As we are not able to specify school names here, it is not necessary to mention which school is better inwhich dimension and which school‟s image is perceived differently. However, we have to mention thatboth general image and image dimensions differ significantly between schools.While collecting data for the study, the school admininstratives were assured that schools name wouldremain confidential. Because of this ethical concern, a great deal of results have to be concealed. If wewere able to mention school names openly, the participating schools would find a chance for benchmarking, see their stranghts and weaknesses, try to improve and maintain their image. As for students andparents, they would benefit from the results when deciding on which school to apply.The research results yielded that, as a whole, none of the participating schools is superior to others in allimage dimensions (Table5). For instance, a school with a good academic quality image, may be lacking inappearance; or a school with a low social image may be better in another image dimension.DISCUSSION AND RECOMMENDATIONSDiscussionThis research showed that the corporate image of schools is measurable. The results yielded that theperceived corporate image of participating schools is medium among students and parents. Of the imagedimensions, quality image was perceived “high”; while programme, infrastructure, social and appearanceimages were perceived “medium”.Additionally, parents‟ perceived image of schools was higher than students, which indicates that students‟expectations for their schools are more than their parents. Gender caused a significant difference inperceived image between students and parents. While female students‟ perceived image of schools waslower, the case was just the opposite for parents. Female parents‟ perceived image was higher than maleparents.Another important finding of the study is that the general image of the participating schools differ fromschool to school. Additionally, with different image dimensions, there are significant differences betweenschools. While some schools are better than the others in some image dimensions, they are left behind in73