A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for Award of the Degree of Master of Science in Human Resource Management (Msc. HRM) of Mzumbe University
This study investigated factors influencing teachers‟ decision to stay in the teaching profession. The study was conducted in Nyamagana Municipal Council (NMC) public secondary schools. The study contains four specific objectives which are to find out how teacher personal characteristics influence teachers‟ decision to stay in teaching profession; to examine how job security and compensation influence teachers‟ retention decision towards teaching career at NMC public secondary schools; to find out whether working environment influence teachers‟ decision to stay in teaching profession in the public secondary schools at NMC and lastly to identify government initiatives for retaining teachers in their teaching profession at NMC public secondary schools.
The study used a case study research design to achieve its objectives. The sample of this study was 60 respondents who were obtained through purposive sampling, stratified sampling and simple random sampling. Since the study adopted both qualitative and quantitative research, interview and questionnaires were used as data collection tools. The field data was collected in accordance with the specific objectives, presented and then analyzed statistically through simple tables, graph and percentage analysis by using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) Software.
The findings indicate that, teacher personal characteristics, job security and compensation are influential factors for teachers‟ decision to stay in teaching professional at NMC public secondary schools. The findings also revealed that a yearly gradual salary increase, working conditions improvement, provision of career development opportunities and promotion are initiatives that government implements to retain teachers.
Finally the study provides conclusions of the findings related to factors discussed in this work and how they influence retention decision among teachers. Then recommendations suggest for proper strategies to increase job satisfaction among teachers to increase the level of teacher retention in public secondary schools.