Factors affecting attrition and retention of public basic school teachers in the south Dayi district of Ghana

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to investigate factors associated with the rate of teacher attrition in public Basic Schools in the South Dayi District. The study further sought to explore mechanisms put in place by stakeholders to help retain public Basic School teachers in the district. A mixed method concurrent triangulation research design was used in the conduct of this study. The study was guided by four research questions. Data for the study were collected through two methods: a survey structured questionnaire that was administered to 285 sampled teacher participants of public basic schools, and a semistructured interview was administered to five educational office workers and five teachers in the South Dayi District. To analyze the quantitative data, descriptive statistics (means, percentage, and standard deviations) were used to explore the state of attrition and inferential statistics (Pearson product-moment correlation and independent samples ttest) were applied to examine the relation between attrition and quality of education as well as the difference between attrition and teachers’ marital status. Qualitative analysis was applied to thematically interpret the data obtained from the semi-structured interviews with education office workers and teacher participants. The result of the study indicated that the most important factors associated with teacher attrition are: Socioeconomic, Managerial, and Interpersonal factors. Finally, the study established that retention mechanisms such as: available opportunities for personal and professional development, leadership styles which empower teachers to participate in decision making process, and appealing relationship with fellow teachers on staff, and lastly, reasonable teaching workload were crucial in retaining teachers. The study recommends that teachers’ salaries, incentives, management policies and teachers’ professional status should be given an urgent attention.