Exploring Teachers’ Retention and Attrition in Middle and Secondary Schools in Eritrea: Perspectives of Currently Serving Teachers

This paper seeks to contribute a fresh perspective meant to enrich the current limited discourse on teacher retention and attrition in Sub Saharan Africa particularly in Eritrea. Factors leading to teachers’ retention and attrition in middle and secondary schools in Eritrea are discussed. Results of an in-depth semi-structured interview with thirteen teachers in five purposefully selected schools show that low remuneration, poor school leadership, school-home distance, and placement without preference & interest are factors for teacher attrition. Conversely, meagre alternative employment opportunities, love of the profession, and love of the school children play a crucial role in teachers’ persistence in their profession. Although the study was carried out among few teachers and few schools, the findings present valuable discoveries useful for policymakers, school leaders, and stakeholders in the struggle for retaining quality teachers in the schools.

Lonely, homesick and struggling: undergraduate students and intention to quit university

Purpose This paper outlines a variety of the research on student attrition and recognises some of the sensitivities that may be involved for some students in dealing with dropping out of university. This paper claims that because of these sensibilities, some student’s responses to direct questions about the reasons for attrition may be biased by social desirability. The purpose of this paper is to get beyond social desirability bias to examine a fuller range of reasons for student retention and attrition. Design/methodology/approach In an exploratory investigation, this research study uses a projective technique which helps to circumvent the conscious defences of respondents. The projective technique is based on the “thematic apperception test” and uses a “bubble drawing” to elicit emotional and more socially undesirable responses. Findings All first-year students appear to consider leaving university, and emotional considerations involving loneliness and homesickness are much more prominent than most quantitative studies acknowledge. For example, in this research, social concerns are twice as prominent as financial concerns, whereas in past survey research, financial concerns have been identified as most prominent. Practical implications To retain students, universities need to provide new students with real care and support, especially in their first few weeks at university. To study retention comprehensively, researchers need to go beyond the confines of positivist research. Originality/value This is the first study that uses a projective technique to investigate student retention and attrition. By going beyond a merely positivist approach to research, a fuller, deeper and more complete understanding of the wide extent and profound nature of the emotional issues involved in student attrition and retention is gained.

Examining the relationship between the accreditation of engineering programmes and institutional performance

Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between engineering programme accreditation (EPA) and institutional performance (IP) using perceptual measures. Two IP dimensions have been explored to test this relationship, namely, graduate employability and student retention and attrition. Design/methodology/approach This quantitative research is based on the perceptions of 211 academic staff holding a range of positions within 15 higher education institutions located in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries (GCC). Linear regression was used to test the relationships in the data. Findings The empirical analyses proved that EPA has a statistically significant positive relationship with the IP dimensions, namely, graduate employability, student retention and attrition. Research limitations/implications A few limitations were encountered while conducting this study. Most of the accredited engineering programmes are located in the United Arab Emirates and Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) (nearly 73%). The online survey was the only option available for the researcher to reach some universities rather than using a face-method to collect data. Another limitation is the availability of only five accredited programmes in some countries such as Oman, where the researcher is based, meaning that the researcher had to devote extra time and effort to contact the other five countries by emails, telephone calls and travel to attain a reasonable survey sample size. Practical implications There are many implications of these findings for the universities, employers and economies of the GCC. All GCC countries are concerned about high unemployment rates; for example, the rate of youth unemployment reached 41% in KSA. Adopting EPA for all academic programmes will eliminate the mismatch between the skills graduate students develop while they are studying and those skills required of them when they are practising their job in industry. Although the jobs market is determined by the wider economy, accredited programmes may help graduates to obtain employment because employers are more able to recruit students who graduate from accredited programmes. Universities aim to retain students until graduation and improving student retention and lowering attrition rate brings many direct and indirect benefits to universities, including saving governments’ financial resources. Originality/value This study is the first to examine the relationship between EPA and IP within the six GCC region as a whole.