CHALLENGES TEACHERS ENCOUNTER WHILE SEEKING FOR PROMOTION AND UPGRADING

Abstract

Promotion and upgrading of teachers after years of service and/or further studies are very essential in the working life of teachers as other formal employees. This is because promotion and upgrading serve as motivational means for hard work and high productivity. However, they do not come without challenges. The challenges inherent in the processes of promotion and upgrading of teachers and the effects the challenges have on teachers seemed to have received little scientific investigation. This research gap precipitated the conduct of this exercise in the Bono region of Ghana. The descriptive survey study was conducted among public senior high school teachers and a sample size of 246 was used. The data were collected using a survey questionnaire and SPSS version 23 was used to analyze the data. The study revealed the following as the challenges teachers encounter during promotions: irregular and untimely release of promotion information, long procedure in the application, too many documents required, and untimely release of promotion results. The challenges tend to have effects on teachers’ work output as well as their psychological, social, and emotional well-being. The study further disclosed that the teachers encounter challenges with upgrading as well which also tends to affect them psychologically, emotionally, and socially as well as their work output. It is therefore concluded that the challenges that the teachers encounter while undergoing promotion and upgrading tend to have an effect on their psychological, social and emotional states as well as their confidence to work which can affect their work output. This would be detrimental to student learning and progress. The study then recommends that the Ghana Education Service (GES) has to take the necessary steps to eliminate the challenges inherent in promotion and upgrading to enable teachers to devote adequate time to their work. Article visualizations: