School Based Factors Influencing Teacher Turnover in Public Primary Schools in Mathioya Sub-county Murang’a County, Kenya

Abstract

All over the world teachers leave or quit the teaching profession due to various reasons. Teacher turnover changes from year to year and it varies from country to country and from continent to continent. The major causes of teacher turnover range from institutional factors which include poor working conditions, poor remuneration, transfer policies and discipline policies. The general purpose of this study was to analyse the school based factors influencing teacher turnover in public primary schools in Mathioya Sub-County. The specific objectives of the study were to establish how pay benefit, how working conditions, how administrative support and how teachers professional qualification influences teacher turn over in Mathioya Sub County. This research employed descriptive survey design. Stratified random sampling was used to select primary schools, from which teachers were randomly selected to participate in the study. The sample size was 30 head teachers and 140 teachers. A questionnaire was administered to the sampled respondents. The questionnaire comprised both structured and a few unstructured questions in order to employ both quantitative and qualitative techniques in data collection and analysis. The collected data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Data were presented through frequency distribution tables with percentages mean, standard deviation, bar graphs and pie charts. A conclusion of the findings found that all the research variables contributed to teacher turnover though teachers felt pay benefit was least in leading to turnover. Teachers also felt that there was little or none administrative support on the ground through the office of head teacher. The researcher recommended that TSC should appeal for more resources from government to hire additional teachers since many schools have shortage of between one to five teachers and also recommended primary school teachers should also specialize in their teaching subjects just like their colleagues in secondary schools. This will protect primary school teachers from been allocated any subject to teach as is the case currently. In addition the researcher highlighted areas for further research such as need to use other research design to measure school based factors influencing teachers turn over in public primary schools and other researchers can conduct a research on contribution of lack of administrative support by head teachers to teachers on teacher’s turnover.