Description:
The objective of the study was to investigate how the teacher attrition affects the academic performance in public secondary schools. Four objectives were concerned: (1) examine strategies employed by the government in enhancing students’ academic performance (2) explores teachers' views about the factors which enhance the academic performances of the learners (3) assess the relationship of performance between the highest and less attrition schools (4) examine the impact of teacher attrition to the overall academic performance in public secondary school. This study was led by four research questions. This study was carried out in the Magu district in Mwanza region. The sample used were 46 respondents, 32 were normal teachers from 8 secondary schools, of which 4 schools were randomly selected and other 4 secondary schools were purposeful selected within the district, 8 headmasters,5 teachers who left teaching and 1 (DEO) District Education Officer. The data were collected using various tools, i.e., questionnaires, interviews, documentary reviews and FGDs. The pilot study was done before conducting the research to test the validity of the tools to be used. Data were analysed statistically using (SPSS) for quantitative data whereby the tools used were questionnaires, while for the qualitative data were analysed by using descriptive display matrices and the tools used were interviews, FGDs and documentary reviews. The research findings showed that, the government found employs different strategies in enhancing academic performance, also the academic performance is highly influenced by the presence of teachers, moreover, there is no relationship of academic performance between high and lowest attrition rate school. Furthermore, the findings showed that
most of the teachers who leave teaching are science teachers than arts one and lastly, it was found that; attrition had an impact on the overall academic performance. The researcher suggests that, teachers should be given priority in order to attract many to join this profession, and then the government should enact law which will limit new employed teachers to join other field until that teacher works for at least a length of seven years.