Attrition and Persistence among Visual Arts Students in selected Senior High Schools in Nkwanta South District: Implications for Visual Arts Education in Oti Region, Ghana.

Student attrition and persistence in Visual Arts education has become a worrying development, with a consequential negative outcome for continuity of Visual Arts curriculum in Senior High Schools, promotion of art and culture, industrial development, and professional entrepreneurship. It is against this background that this research sought to investigate the causes of attrition and persistence among the Visual Arts students in the selected schools and discuss their implication on Visual Arts education. The study employed the mixed method of qualitative and quantitative research design. The descriptive research under the qualitative research design was also employed. The study employed the purposive, snowballing and systematic sampling procedure to select 81 respondents out of the general population of 235 which comprised Heads of Visual Arts department, Visual Arts students, teachers, and students who have left the Visual Arts programme for other programmes at Nkwanta and Brewaniase Senior High School. Questionnaire and interview were used to solicit data from the sampled respondents for the study. After analysis and discussion of the data solicited from the respondents, it was revealed that, Visual Arts students attrite the Visual Arts programme due to reasons such as financial constraints, lack of practical working studio, lack of adequate teachers and loss of interest and motivation. The data also revealed that, Visual Arts students persist the Visual Arts programme to the ultimate due to reasons such as love and interest for the programme. Again, Visual Arts students who do not persist the programme to the ultimate end up in wasting their talent. The following conclusions were drawn for the study. Majority of Visual Arts students persist the programme because of the motivation, interest and love for the programme that drives them but the Visual Arts departments in the selected schools lack the necessary resources to sustain the love, interest and motivation of their students. Again, Lack of studio and other relevant teaching and learning materials in the departments serves as a blockage to the department in achieving its core mandate of equipping students with practical skills thereby leading to the problem of wasted talent among the students. It was recommended among other things for consideration that, Heads of the Visual Arts should device a policy that could generate income for the department from which such income can be used to supplement the financial constrains confronting the students and the department. Moreover, resource persons in the field of arts should be invited to orientate Visual Arts students at the beginning and middle of their stay on campus on the prospect of offering Visual Arts. This proposal to orientate Visual Arts students on the benefits and prospect of offering Visual Arts (especially midway through their three years of offering the Visual Arts programme in the selected schools) will serve the purpose of rekindling the interest and motivation of students who might be contemplating whether to attrite or persist the Visual Arts programme due to various reasons that were identified in the data collection on causes of attrition and persistence among Visual Arts students.

Source: KNUST