Recruiting, retaining and Retraining Secondary School Teachers and Principals in Sub-Saharan Africa

This working paper is based on country case studies of Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea,Madagascar, Tanzania, and Uganda, and an extensive literature review. In manyparts of Africa, the demand for secondary teachers substantially exceeds thesupply, due to factors such as secondary teacher attrition, bottlenecks in theteacher preparation system, and perceived unattractive conditions of service.Few countries have strong policies, strategies, and programs for recruiting ablesecondary school graduates to secondary teaching. The paper suggests severalcritical and promising areas for improvement in the quality of secondary teachersthrough new approaches to recruitment; pre-service and in-service teacherdevelopment; and improvements in the deployment, utilization, compensation,and conditions of service for teachers