This book aimed at establishing the effects the teacher recruitment and utilization policy had on quality of secondary school education. In Kenya the teacher recruitment policy is demand-driven, operating under decentralized system. Teachers are recruited in schools where there exists vacancy through the school Board of Governors. The book sought to establish: the extent to which the policy had been implemented; the strengths and weaknesses of the policy as far as quality education was concerned; the challenges experienced in the implementation of the policy; the attitudes, opinions and perceptions held on the policy in relation to quality education; the effect the policy had on quality education; and ways of enhancing the policy for improved quality of education. This book will be very resourceful to: school administrators, headteachers, teachers, teacher trainees, teacher trainers, education officers, policy makers, education specialists, scholars, students, parents, school sponsors, professional counselors, research students and research trainers. The reader will find it easy to understand because of the straightforward language and systematic approach used in the book.
Teacher attrition is endemic in education, creating teacher quantity and quality gaps across schools that are often stratified by region and racialized nuance (Cowan et al., 2016; Scafidi et al., 2017). This reality is starkly reflected in South Carolina. Not too long ago, on May 1, 2019, a sea of approximately 10,000 people, dressed in red, convened at the state capital in downtown Columbia, SC (Bowers, 2019b). This statewide teacher walkout was assembled to call for the improvement of teachers' working conditions and the learning conditions of their students. The gathering was the largest display of teacher activism in the history of South Carolina and reflected a trend in a larger wave of teacher walkouts that have rippled across the nation over the last five years. The crowd comprised teachers from across South Carolina, who walked out of their classrooms for the gathering, as well as numerous students, parents, university faculty, and other community members that rallied with teachers in solidarity. Undergirding this walkout and others that took hold across the country is a perennial and pervasive pattern of unfavorable teacher working conditions that have contributed to what some are calling a teacher shortage “crisis” (Chuck, 2019). We have focused our work specifically on the illustrative case of South Carolina, given the extreme teacher staffing challenges the state is facing. Across numerous metrics, the South Carolina teacher shortage has reached critical levels, influenced by teacher recruitment and retention challenges. For instance, the number of teacher education program completers has declined annually, dropping from 2,060 in 2014-15 to 1,642 in the 2018-19 school year. Meanwhile, the number of teachers leaving the teaching field has increased from 4,108.1 to 5,341.3 across that same period (CERRA, 2019). These trends are likely to continue as COVID-19 has put additional pressure on the already fragile teacher labor market. Some of the hardest-to-staff districts are often located in communities with the highest diversity and poverty. To prosper and progress, reformers and public stakeholders must have a vested interest in maintaining full classrooms and strengthening the teaching workforce. An important element of progress towards tackling these longstanding challenges is to gain a comprehensive understanding of the problem. While teacher shortages are occurring nationwide (Garcia & Weiss, 2019), how they manifest regionally is directly influenced by its localized historical context and the evolution of the teaching profession's reputation within a state. Thus, the impetus of this book is to use South Carolina as an illustrative example to discuss the context and evolution that has shaped the status of the teaching profession that has led to a boiling point of mass teacher shortages and the rise of historic teacher walkouts.
Teachers are at the heart of good education, and good teacher policies are essential to ensure adequate supply, deployment and management of teachers. Enrollment in primary education has grown rapidly in Sub-Saharan Africa. Yet teacher policy in the region has oft en evolved without clear planning; in the absence of an overall strategy, countries have experienced serious problems with teacher supply and deployment, as well as with the quality of teaching. Based on case studies of education systems and practices in eight English-speaking African countries, 'Teachers in Anglophone Africa: Issues in Teacher Supply, Training, and Management' closely examines issues of teacher supply, deployment, management and finance. The book suggests that these issues are closely interrelated. Low numbers of qualified teaching graduates may result in teacher shortages; these shortages may make it difficult to deploy teachers effectively. Problems with teacher deployment may result in inefficient utilization of the teachers available, and those teachers' effectiveness may be further reduced by weak teacher management and support systems. The book identifies policies and practices that are working on the ground, noting their potential pitfalls and pointing out that policies designed to address one problem may make another problem worse. 'Teachers in Anglophone Africa: Issues in Teacher Supply, Training, and Management' offers a useful synthesis of the issues and draws together a series of promising practices, which can serve as positive suggestions for countries seeking to improve their teacher policies. The book should be of great assistance to education ministries and their development partners throughout the region as they address the challenges of the next phases of expansion in education.
This book draws on case studies from India, Mexico, and Tanzania to examine the complex processes that lead to the educational marginalization of children through differential access to teacher quality. Growing evidence indicates that access to good teachers can boost the academic success of disadvantaged children and narrow achievement gaps between more and less privileged students. Yet in many countries, stronger teachers are concentrated in the classrooms of more advantaged children. Using a teacher labor markets framework, the authors explore the actions of those who employ teachers the demand side and teachers themselves the supply side. Examining key junctures in the teacher career pipeline, from recruitment and training to retention and transfer, the authors find that the actions of the demand side often clash with teachers’ preferences to live and work in satisfactory environments or to be close to home and family. Too often, the misalignment of the demand and supply sides places marginalized children at a profound educational disadvantage.
