Factors causing high turnover rate of secondary education tutors at the Namibian College of Open Learning: The case of southern regions
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Date
2018
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University of Namibia
Abstract
NAMCOL makes use of formal education teachers who are appointed by the College as part-time tutors. Tutors are appointed on a seven-month contract starting from March up to September of each year. They are allocated one to two class groups depending on the number of learners enrolled per subject and are remunerated on an hourly basis. Many tutors therefore, prefer to teach more than one class group and decline to be appointed for one group only because the more class groups they teach the higher their remuneration. It was observed that many tutors resign before the end of their contract and some never return after the first trimester while others disappear without prior notice, leaving learners unattended to for unspecified period of time. This is a problem to the institution, as it does not have full control over the tutors. The purpose of the study was therefore, to explore the factors contributing to a high turnover among the secondary education tutors in NAMCOL’s Southern region. When tutors leave or resign, learners do not get the support they require over a period of time until new tutors are appointed and this may lead to the poor academic performance of learners. The study mainly focused on the secondary tutors who resigned from tutoring in NAMCOL’s Southern Region. The study falls under interpretivist research paradigm. The research approach for this study was qualitative. Individual interviews were conducted with the participants, and document analysis was also used to collect additional data.
The study revealed that delayed payment, lack of ODL and teaching experience, inadequate communication flows from NAMCOL regional and head office and heavy workload were some of the contributing factors to the tutor turnover. The study findings also showed that external factors such as competition from other institutions playing similar roles was also one of the causes of tutor turnover. The findings from this study imply that the college needs to design and implement effective tutor/staff retaining strategies, which may ultimately lead to improved results of learners in the secondary education programmes
The study made several recommendations for practice to open schools, which include the development of a remuneration and reward policy as well as training policy and guidelines for tutoring staff to ensure that they are kept abreast on the dynamics of ODL.
Description
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Degree of Master of Education (Educational Leadership, Management and Policy Studies)