FACTORS CAUSING SECONDARY SCHOOL TEACHERS DELAY IN REPORTING AT THEIR WORK STATIONS IN RURAL AREAS

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background to the Study

Lateness is one of the most serious unethical practices facing many organizations in the world today. Few organizations can claim 100% attendance by all employees. Common practice is that occasionally employees will report for work late, leave early from work, extend tea, lunch and even toilet break, attend private business during working hours, forge illness, and extend time to collect tools of work and unscheduled absence from work. Organizations treat all this as absenteeism. According to Chandhury, et al. (2006), lateness is influenced by many factors which include personal illness, a relative’s sickness who has to be attended to, family conflicts, lack of job satisfaction leading to low morale, lack of personal competence, lack of friendly work group norms, poor leadership at the work place, lack of eective supervision and inspection of employees, assignment of other duties outside work place, bad weather conditions, union influence and poor working conditions. While these challenges are common in many organizations, employee challenges vary from one organization to another. Delay in reporting and not staying in work places for new teachers is a great challenge for public secondary schools in Nigeria. This is due to that secondary school education is being considered an important sub-sector in the education system, as well as for the development of the country’s economy (Jidamva, 2012). Delaying and non-reporting teachers in public secondary schools can be the outcome of inefficiency in the provision of quality education in the country and this contributes much in failure to attain the National Development Vision 2025, in which education is visualized as a strategic requisite for economic growth and poverty eradication. In many parts of Sub Saharan Africa the demand for secondary school teachers exceeds supply, in some cases by large amounts. Factors contributing to this include high rates of teacher attrition in some areas due to illness, blockages in teacher preparation systems, unattractive conditions of service like perceived low salary and arbitrary teacher deployment systems, (Mulkeen et al., 2007).

The study also found that other factors for the teacher attrition to include unattractive work locations, unprofessional treatment of teachers, lack of professional development opportunities and insufficient supportive supervision. UNESCO (2010) shows that attrition can be caused by reaching retirement age, illness or death, and this is determined largely by demographics, health conditions and retirement policy. The study also suggests that a voluntary attrition is driven largely by personal factors, the pull of alternative labour market opportunities and the push of dissatisfaction with teaching, but the possible actions also include increased remuneration and improvement of career progression which have significant costs.

1.2 Statement of the Problem

Successful education system does not solely depends on the number of students in the school, but on what students learn. In this regard, teachers play an essential role in enhancing students’ learning. In many parts of Africa, the demand for secondary school teachers considerably exceeds the supply due to factors such as secondary school teacher attrition, blockages in the teacher preparation system, and perceived unattractive conditions of service (Mulkeen et al, 2007). Secondary education with acceptable learning outcomes could only be attained if posted teachers report and stay in work stations. It is well known that, teachers are central to the realization of national and international education and poverty reduction goals, as the key factors for increased economic growth and social development. However, the growing concern is that teachers in are increasingly not staying in work places, this is being reflected in deteriorating teaching performance and learning outcome. Although teachers have experienced low and irregular salary payments, lack of proper housing, inadequate teaching facilities, low status and limited opportunities for professional development. Poor incentive also is another factor that teachers complain about, and this leads to some teachers quit the profession. Given this fact the study set out to investigate into what leads to teachers delay to report in their new workplaces when they are first appointed and why they fail to stay long in their work stations after they had reported.