The Contribution of Motivation to Teachers Retention in Primary Schools in Tanzania:

Abstract

Motivating employees is important for performance of any organization. Particularly, primary teachers need to be motivated so that they can emotionally deal with children in their day-to-day activities and continue to work with the same institution. This study was conducted to assess the contribution of motivation to teacher’s retention in public and private primary schools in Arusha DC. Specifically, the study examined motivation factors which contributing to teachers’ retention at work place, and compared teachers’ levels of motivation in private and public primary schools and how retain them. Study adopted the case study research methodology design and Quantitative techniques were applied for data analysis. The quantitative technique involved Questionnaire and random sampling technique were used with the sample size of 150 teachers. Generally, the findings showed that teachers were motivated at their respective job and both they are ready to continue with their current job station. However, it was observed that level of motivation among private schools’ teachers was higher than for those in the public schools while public schools’ teacher was attracted more by job security this factor makes some teachers in private schools to be ready to shift to public schools due to insecurity in their current Job while teachers in public primary schools are ready to shift to secondary schools for more enjoyable job and little working hours. Teachers in the private sectors were more motivated by their salaries than their counterparts in the public schools. The study concluded that teachers in the private primary schools in Arusha DC were more motivated than their counterparts in the public schools but it was hard to retain them due to job insecurity in private schools. It was recommended that Arusha District Council should motivate teacher in the public primary schools to make them more satisfactory of their job and reduce job boredom while Teachers in Private primary schools in Arusha Dc need more job security to reduce the fear of missing their job. Finally, for Public Schools the Council should recruit more primary school teachers because enrollment to those schools has been on sharp increase in the recent years