Mr Toyin Bawalla Coping Strategies of Today’s Public Secondary School Teachers, Ogun State, Nigeria

Abstract

The study aimed at investigating the coping strategies adopted by public secondary school teachers in Ogun State, Nigeria. Today, Nigeria’s macro-economic factors ranging from inflation and the inability of the government to reward teachers adequately may have precipitated teachers to engage in other activities for additional income. The study was anchored on Equity Theory propounded by Adams which explains fairness in terms of the treatments of employees in the workplace. The study adopted a qualitative method to elicit information on challenges faced and reasons why teachers moonlight. Key Informant Interviews (KIIs) and In-depth Interviews (IDIs) were conducted for both the ASUSS unions and retired school principals in Ogun State. Data generated were transcribed and content-analyzed. The findings indicated that teachers were dissatisfied with their jobs thereby resorting to other activities which included anchoring events which are popularly known as masters of ceremonies in social events in weddings and coronations. The study recommended that there be a need to increase the pay packages for public secondary school teachers to make the education and teaching profession lucrative in to discourage teachers from moonlighting.

Financial Rewards and Job Commitment Among Public Secondary School Teachers in Ogun State, Nigeria

“…At a point, teachers were striking persistently. This may have resulted in a tremendous decline in the quality of education, which resulted in poor results of students in the terminal class of SS 3 (NUT, 2012 andBawalla, 2020) The respondents were also asked to comment on the financial rewards provided by the state government. Most of them believed that the financial rewards from government were not encouraging at all.…”

“…Job commitment basically has to do with the extent to which employees like their work. Studies have discussed ways and dimension of job commitment and satisfaction, as well as satisfaction, consequences and antecedents of job satisfaction vis-à-vis the relationship between satisfaction and commitment (Bawalla, 2020). The term satisfaction has also been examined under various socio-demographic characteristics of age, gender, race, education and work experience (Omolawal and Bawalla, 2017).…”

“…The state government and public secondary schools teachers had been at loggerheads over issues the Ogun State chapter of the National Union of Teachers (NUT) identified as 'Teachers Plight' and the problems bedeviling education and teachers in the state. These include instability in gross net pay of teachers' salaries, delay of staff promotion, failure to upgrade teachers' salaries after obtaining additional qualification or certificate; failure on the part of the government to pay the agreed 27.5% federal government increment, teachers poor conducive environment of work, government delaying the payment of teachers' salaries and so on (Bawalla, 2020).…”

Perception towards Level of Job Commitment of Public Secondary School Teachers in Ogun State, Nigeria

“…The commitment of secondary schools teachers in the Ogun State as reflected in students' performances shows that the commitment of teachers to academic work is below expectation due to a number of factors such as incessant industrial conflicts between teachers and state government (Bawalla, 2020). The state government and public secondary schools teachers have been at logger heads over issues the Ogun State chapter of National Union of Teachers (NUT) identified as 'Teachers Plight' and the problems bedeviling education and teachers in the state.…”

“…The rate at which students in terminal classes failed in recent times are alarming and have become incessant and this should be taken serious by the concerned authorities. For instance, according to the Department of Research, Planning and Statistics of Ministry of Education, Ogun State (2014), the performance of students with five (5) credits including English and mathematics in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013 are 13.9 percent, 11.4 percent, and 18.22 percent 19 percent and 26.5 percent respectively (Bawalla & Nafiu, 2018) This, no doubt, accounts for the number of private secondary schools which has continued to increase tremendously. According to the Department of Research, Planning and Statistics in the Ministry of Education (2014), the number of private secondary schools in the Ogun State had increased enormously in the previous decade.…”