Causes of science and technical teachers’ attrition and strategies for retention in Adamawa State Secondary Schools

Abstract

This study investigated the causes of science and technical teachers’ attrition and strategies for retention in Adamawa State Secondary Schools. Attrition refers to exit of teachers without replacement. Survey research design was adopted for the study. Three research questions guided the study and hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. The sample of the study was 785. The entire population of principals and technical teachers were studied while science teachers were sampled and selected by stratified random sampling technique. Instrument for data collection was questionnaire which was face validated and Cronbach alpha was used to determine the coefficient of internal consistency which yielded 0.71. Mean was used to answer the research questions while ANOVA was used to test the hypotheses. The study revealed that poor conditions of service, poor salaries and wages contributed to the teachers’ attrition rates which resulted in shortage of the teachers, overloading of existing teachers, and poor performance of students in examinations among others. The strategies for retention include provision of attractive conditions of service, provision of facilities for teaching and learning. It was recommended that Adamawa state government should provide good incentives, enough teaching and learning materials to schools as mechanism for accretion. Key words: Teaching, attrition, retention, strategies.