A comparative study of Vocational aspirations of retiring Teachers of secondary and Basic Schools: A case of Lusaka District
The teaching profession has been an integral part of the development of societies since time immemorial through the provision of prerequisite knowledge and skills for pursuit of other professions. Besides thwarting the MOE efforts to provide enough teachers, attrition resulted in a young and relatively inexperienced teaching corps (Mulcahy-Dunn, et al., 2003: 23). A descriptive survey design was employed to collect a set of qualitative and quantitative data. The data were collected using semi-structured questionnaires and unstructured interviews. Quantitative findings were analysed using SPSS which generated tables through cross-tabulation while those from qualitative data were narrated. The major findings disclosed that, on the one hand, there was a high likelihood of losing high school retiring teachers who taught technical subjects such as science and mathematics. On the other hand, basic schools were more likely going to lose retiring teachers of Civics, Geography, History, Religious Education, and Office Practice and English. Basic school teachers were keen on improving their financial status even if most of them considered teaching as a high status profession. Basic school retiring teachers were more likely to adjust easily to retirement than high school retiring teachers despite having an inferior salary to that of their high school counterparts. High school teachers were found to be more likely to exit from the teaching profession than their basic school counterparts in general. It was inferred that, when they decided to leave teaching, most retiring teachers preferred management related vocations. Their new vocational aspirations mainly remained within the field of education. This was more manifest among basic school retiring teachers. The study recommended: the reorganization of the unprogressive career structure in MOE so as to have an attractive promotion prospects for teachers; formulation or refinement of pre-retirement counselling and education programmes in government institutions or schools to re-orient and prepare workers for post-pensionable vocations; and the MOE to systematically reintegrate retired teachers into the system by annually employing those who may be interested.
Retirement-Zambia, Teacher Retirement-Zambia
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