Impact of employee benefits on teacher turnover in the public secondary education system, Namibia

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Date
2007
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Abstract
Over the last 5-10 years, the Namibian government has made positive efforts to improve the benefits and services offered to the teaching professionals in the public school education system. This followed heavy public criticisms about the deteriorating quality of the public education system and of its failure to meet the needs of the society as expected in the education act of 2001. The quality of the public education system suffers from a high rate of teacher turn-over largely benefiting the private sector and other parts of the public sector including some migraqtion to countries abroad. Some of the reasons given in teacher exit inetrviews include: terachers in the public sector are not well remunerated; they are not treated well, or taken care of. As a result of poor working conditions of the teachers, many of the young, educated, capable, experienced and skilled teachers left the education system and the gap is being taken up by poorly educated graduates from both the secondary education system and the tertiary education system
The present study assessed the impact of employee benefits on teacher turnover in the public secondary education system in Namibia and presents an analysis of lessons learnt that should be instructive to future education policies, education planners and strategic regulation in the secondary education sector. The main objectives of this study were:(1) to characterize the various types of employee benefits offered to the teaching sataff in Ohangwena Educational Region. (2) To investigate the specific effect of employee benefits on teacher turnover in the teaching profession in the Ohangwena Educational Region and why teachers are not staying within the region after they have been trained and recruited. (3) To identify various management, administrative and logistical problems experienced by the education sector in the provision of adequate teachers' benefits in the Ohangwena Education Region. (4) To propose strategies to improve teachers' recruitment and retention ratios in the Ohangwena Educational region
The study was both qualitative and quantitative in nature as interviews were conducted with the principals and the inspectors in the Ohangwena Education region while questionnaires sent to four senior secondary schools were analyzed. Schools that participated in the survey were: i.e. Ongha Senior Secondary School, Haimbili Haufiku Senior Secondary School, eengedjo Senior secondary School and Ponhofi Senior Secondary School in the Ohnagwena education region. A correlation design was employed with the two instruments (questionnaires and the interviews). The target population was all the teaching professionals, both males and females, and of all ages. Out of 96 questionaires that were sent to the four secondary schools only 53 questionaires were returned. Both schools and teachers, including inspectors were randomly selected to participate in the reseaqrch study. The research instruments were pilot tested at Khomas High School in Windhoek in the Khomas Education region. The researcher personally collected questionnaires from the respondents within two days of distributing them
The study finds that, teaching staff are receiving only the basic employee benefits and services such as: housing allowance, basic salary, pension, and subsidized medical aid. It also reveals that teaching staffs are still demanding decent accommodation and financial rewards for those that are performing better. The respondents in this study also reveal that, teaching professionals are dissatisfied with the current benefits and services
Moreover, the study reveals that, teachers are leaving the profession because of poor working conditions and more male teachers are leaving the profession than female teachers, most of those that are leaving the profession are between 26-30 years old, the majority of them are qualified and experienced professional teachers with either a Diploma or Degree in subjects they are teaching
Furthermore, the findings also reveals that, as more teachers are leaving the profession the quality of the education system will be low as a result of a high failure rate due to the fact that only the less experienced and less skilled teachers remained in the profession. This scourge of teachers leaving the profession, will also leads to low quality of educational products, and the region will end up relying on foreign teachers, create stressful situations, management and administrative problems such as: lack of financial resources, lack of trained personnel to facilitate workshops, poor infrastructure, and lack of parents' involvement in the education of their children, just to mention a few
The study also suggested that, the following should be carried out to reduce the turnover rate: provision of better benefits to teachers, all stakeholders in the education should work together as a team, increase and introduce workshops to upgrade teachers knowledge and skills, create more promotional and fair opportunities in the teaching profession, reduce the teacher-learner ratio, provide training resources to train under performing teachers and also introduce the piece rate system of payment to encourage hard work. The study however, concluded that the Ohangwena education region and the Ministry of Education in general needs to offer decent accommodation to teachers, and that teachers are very dissatisfied with the current benefits offered to the profession, as the majority, as the majority of teachers are leaving the profession, the quality of the public secondary education system will be low
Description
A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Business Administration in General Management
Keywords
School personnel management, Teachers, Salaries
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