AN APPRAISAL OF THE INFLUENCE OF DEMOGRAPHIC ISSUES ON TEACHERS RECRUITMENT AND MAINTENANCE

Abstract
When schools are established, qualified teachers must be in place to prepare students for the acquisition of knowledge and relevant skills for world of work. Teachers therefore must be recruited. This paper looked at recruitment of teachers and their retention. It was observed that there are government agencies charged with the issue of recruitment but not retention. Proposals for retaining teachers were given. It was also noted that despite these proposals, some issues like non promotion when due, lack of accommodations among others, improved school organizational factors, inadequate teachers’ pre -service preparatory institutions are lacking. This research was driven by an interest in finding out if the demographic variables (gender; age education level) have significant difference on teachers’ willingness to stay on teaching profession. Three null hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. The study adopted the ex-post facto research design. The sample size was 50 teachers. Data were analyzed using inferential statistics – independent t-test and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). The weight of statistical evident showed that demographic factors have a significant difference on teachers’ willingness to stay on the teaching profession in Rivers State, Nigeria. Based on the findings, it was recommended among others that employers of teachers should add retention packages such as ‘Golden handcuff’ to the existing ones in order to take into consideration demographic variables. it also recommended the need to step up teacher training programmes and control teachers migration.
Keywords-Recruitment, retention, quality education, teacher migration.