Students` perceptions of school resource centre quality :a case study of school resource centre at SMK Sg Pusu, Gombak

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate students’ perceptions of School Resource Center quality in SMK Sg. Pusu, Gombak. The main objectives of this study are to identify the pattern of School Resource Centre usage among students and to determine students’ perceptions of their School Resource Centre quality. Out of 295 sets of questionnaires distributed, 258 (87.46%) questionnaires were answered completely. In term of the SRC usage, three factors namely gender, form and also the residential status were identified in this study and were hypothesized to be related to the SRC usage by the students. The findings show that residential status seemed to illustrate greater effect and pattern on the SRC usage rather than the other two which suggest that those who stayed in hostel have higher level of SRC usage. In this research, five factors that indicate the SRC quality was decided by the researcher namely the quality collection, quality services, quality services offered by the staff, quality facilities provided and quality study environment in the SRC. Although the level of SRC usage among the students was quite low, interestingly, it did not indicated that the students have declined the quality of the School Resource Centre. The finding proved that the students agreed that their School Resource Centre is a quality resource centre. However, the findings did reveal some aspects of the SRC that need to be improved in order to improve the quality. The results shows that the collection did not really met the expectation of the users in term two aspects that there were the inefficiency and inadequacy in term of the availability of the resources as well as consistency in updating the resources. The finding also suggests that the SRC was not quite ‘proactive’ in promoting the students to visit them especially during the school holiday. The score indicates that although most of the respondents admit that the SRC provides quality services by the staff, the students prefer if the staff could be more available most of the time they are in need to help them as well as to guide in selecting resources available in the SRC that suits their level of knowledge.