WHAT IS IT THAT KEEPS GOOD TEACHERS IN THE TEACHING PROFESSION: A REFLECTION ON TEACHER RETENTION

The role of quality, qualified and effective teachers is invaluable that one may fail to come up with proper expression to express the magnitude of their significance in its exactness. Through classroom interaction with students, teachers work as transmitters of knowledge, values and skills which work as tools for rural and urban transformation. Teachers provide education which works as a solution to poverty alleviation, empowerment, sustainable development and environmental challenges. Oziambo (2010) asserts that teachers are responsible for high standards in education, transmission of values and norms to students by teaching them or being models. They are at the front line of developing students’ understanding, learning and core values. Despite such teachers’ significance, teachers do not stay in the teaching cadre. Teacher retention is currently akin to a puzzle especially when Smith and Ingersoll (2004) view the decision to enter teaching by now as being related to ‘a sink or swim’ experience. Teacher retention challenges that have been engendering teacher attrition indisputably called for this study. This paper therefore, firstly attempts to explore the nature and characteristics of teachers who leave teaching. Secondly, it seeks to craft strategies that help to obliterate unnecessary teacher attrition so as to retain good teachers in the teaching cadre. This study deployed the documentary search to explore the topic under scrutiny. It concludes that teaching may become ‘a profession at risk’ if no quick measures are taken to redress the situation. This is due to the fact that Sinyolo (2007) postulates that teachers no longer like teaching, they have lost the morale to teach and some discourage their own children to become teachers. Thus, investing in human resource is indubitable so that working environment for teachers becomes favourable; teacher salaries turn out to be in proportional to teachers’ qualifications and salaries of other fields.