Secondary school teacher attrition: responses of stakeholders in Iringa rural district and municipality

This study intended to examine the responses of stakeholders on secondary school teacher attrition by comparing secondary schools’ conditions with the working conditions of the current occupations of the former secondary school teachers. The study utilized both qualitative and quantitative approaches. The area of the study was Iringa region: Iringa Rural District and Municipality. The sample was composed of five school heads, eleven former secondary school teachers, and fifty current secondary school teachers. Three sampling techniques were used; Simple random sampling, purposive sampling and snow balling sampling. Data was collected through documentary review, interviews and open ended questionnaires. Qualitative data were analysed by content analysis method while quantitative data were put into frequencies and percentages for analysis and inferences were drawn with an effort to answer the questions under the research tasks. The major findings were: That in average seven teachers left a school in a year. They went to other schools, and other professions such as banking, law, army, business, Higher learning Institutions, medicine, and statistics. Most teachers who left were below 35 years old. There was no significance difference between attrition in Rural schools and Municipal schools as well as between private and community schools. Aspects of the working condition that related to attrition in the districts were low salaries, negative community attitude towards the profession, lack of benefits and shortage of houses for teachers. Others were shortage of teaching plus learning materials, and dislike of the profession. It was also revealed that in their current occupations former teachers received more salaries than when they were in secondary school teaching. While the former teachers said they were satisfied in their current occupations, majority of the current teachers, 72 percent intended to leave teaching if they get chances elsewhere. Based on the findings it was recommended that the working conditions should be improved to reduce attrition. Also it was further recommended to have a longitudinal study to properly determine the trend of attrition. It requires having a database for all teachers since lack of data on attrition at the district, regional and National level was to a major extent a limitation of this study.