Teacher’s reward are in Heaven
I remember the first teacher I bonded with, Mr. Mensah, my primary four(4) teacher. He was Ghanaian with the most interesting bald head you would ever see, lol. He had a calm aura around him. He was attentive, had a sense of humor, and was down to earth like most teachers were likely to be perceived. He repeatedly said, “Teacher’s rewards are in heaven,” which sounded noble but a sentiment I have grown to disagree with over time. His role was significant in nurturing my potential and self-confidence during my education. Most of us have similar stories about educators impacting our lives at crucial times, revealing the vital function of teachers in society.
Evaluating the knowledge transfer process fundamentally requires two key elements: a Teacher representing the source of the knowledge being taught and a Learner receiving the shared knowledge. Based on this, you would expect that considerable investments are directed toward upholding education standards by improving and supporting the educator, right? Unfortunately, this is quite the opposite as teachers are amongst the least compensated professionals in most societies, making the teaching profession extremely unpopular. This can be partly attributed to the current business model of schools becoming increasingly capital-intensive.
The present school system's high infrastructure and operation costs significantly overshadow the labor costs of educators, making it difficult to pay attention to the crucial value the educator brings to the school system. These rising costs account for many school operators' annual spending. Schools are challenged with increasing demands and expectations, combined with rising inflation rates, thus leading to a year-on-year rise in tuition costs, which historically translates to little or no effect on teachers’ remuneration. These high operation costs also influence school operators’ decisions to focus on increasing enrollment rates, resulting in an increased workload on teachers, consequently affecting the overall quality of teaching in the classrooms. Ultimately, the brunt of these complex interactions falls on the learner.
Research conducted by GoBe in 2019 revealed that about 50% of teachers in Nigeria engage in side hustles to support their families. They engage in activities like farming, setting up provision stores, and moonlighting as real estate agents to support their families. A teacher interviewed during this research even revealed that considering the ratio of their income from teaching, he would classify his teaching profession as ‘the’ side hustle(he was a Level 10 Civil Servant). It is clear how this can affect morale and the quality of work that teachers put out.
A more concerning effect of this phenomenon is the perception created over time that the teaching profession is not worth chasing if one desires to live a comfortable life. Teaching in Nigeria is less highly esteemed than medicine, finance, or engineering professions, with the work seemingly unattractive to successive generations. GoBe, in 2019, conducted interviews with University students to determine their willingness to consider a career in Education. Interestingly, 80% of the students interviewed gave a verdict against being career educators; these included some students of Education who admitted that they only considered their current course of study because they couldn’t gain admission to study their course of choice. This outcome remained consistent despite efforts to increase the sample of students interviewed. African youths are not interested in becoming Teachers, at least not in Africa, with few success stories involving migrating to countries in Asia to teach English as a second language(ESL). According to UNESCO, in Sub-Saharan Africa – the region with the fastest growing school-age population in Africa – more than 70% of countries face teacher shortages in primary schools, while 90% do not have enough secondary teachers. It also projects that to meet our education goals for 2030, Sub-Saharan Africa must recruit about 15 million teachers. This raises a big question on feasibility: How do we stimulate enrollment, training, and recruitment to fill this gap?
The issues highlighted above call for imaginative and experimental efforts to be applied toward;
Reducing or eliminating significant operating costs of school management - The increased margins accrued could lead to investments channeled toward improving the quality of learning in classrooms and improving the remuneration and development of teachers. These low costs and higher margins also incentivize the creation of more schools.
Rethinking models that enable teachers to capture more value for their services - I can imagine a shared service model that assumes the responsibility of some core operations of school administration (like financial services, educational programming and staff development, technology, marketing, and public communications, etc.) and makes these services available on demand so that schools can focus on their primary goal: to create a learning environment where children thrive. But could these services become so robust and comprehensive that they provide opportunities for individual or small groups of educators to adequately and independently meet the learning requirements of students? 🤔
Design alternative training methods and entry points for the next generation of educators - to stand a chance of meeting our education goals for 2030, we need to adopt an innovative and scalable approach to rapidly train competent educators and create alternative career entry points to plug the persisting teacher shortage. Africa has a substantial youth population with employment needs that could benefit from such innovation.
Alternative earning vehicles for educators - the ubiquity of learning/teaching platforms could be leveraged to provide alternative revenue streams for qualified educators.
Advocate for restoring the status of teachers in modern society - We need to be intentional about rewriting the narratives, telling educators’ stories, and building their esteem so that successive generations can take pride in assuming the most critical responsibility in the world.
This invites innovators to imagine alternative models and solutions so that, unlike Mr. Mensah, future educators will be rewarded in Heaven and here on Earth. GoBe empowers innovators to tackle some of education's most critical challenges. Check us out at www.gobe.africa