TEACHERS ’ PERCEPTIONS ON THE CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF HIGH RATE TEACHER-TURNOVER OF MATHEMATICS AND SCIENCE TEACHERS IN RURAL SECONDARY SCHOOLS – A CASE STUDY OF NKAYI DISTRICT

Copyright © 2014 ISSR Journals. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. ABSTRACT: It is an indisputable fact that expert teachers are perhaps the most fundamental resource for improving student learning. Therefore, the need for the retention of qualified teachers particularly in specialist areas cannot be overemphasized. In many developing countries, Zimbabwe included, teacher turn-over has been a problem especially since the outbreak of HIV/AIDS where during the early 1990s, a large number of professionals, teachers included, succumbed to the epidemic in large numbers. Other factors like retirement and resignations have also played a role towards teacher turn-over. However, the most common form of teacher turn-over is whereby qualified teachers leave poor rural schools to better schools particularly in urban areas. Thus, most rural schools fail to attract qualified mathematics and science teachers and resort to using the unqualified and under qualified teachers thereby creating a dilemma, where the least prepared teachers teach the most educationally vulnerable children. As a result, the pass rate of pupils in rural secondary schools at public examinations, particularly in mathematics and science is consistently low. This study draws on a quantitative inquiry to investigate teachers ’ perceptions on the causes of high-turnover of mathematics and science teachers from rural secondary schools in Zimbabwean secondary schools. The study adopted the descriptive survey design. The target populatio