Impact of Conditions of Service on Teachers’ Job Performance in Public Secondary Schools in Wukari Education Zone, Taraba State.

Abstract

In all the efforts by the Federal Government through several committees to review salary structure of civil servants, none of these committees looked into the salary structure of primary and secondary school teachers, which is the crux of this research; and the researchers feel that this is one of the reasons for the decline in quality of education at this level, which is affecting other levels. This paper examined the impact of conditions of service on teachers’ job performance in public secondary schools in Wukari Education Zone, Taraba State. Three research questions guided the study. The ex-post facto survey research design was adopted for the study. The population of this study consisted of all principals and teachers in all the two local government areas under Wukari Education Zone, namely: Ibbi and Wukari, with a total of 28 public secondary schools, and teacher strength of 462. Random sampling technique was used to select 15 Secondary Schools. 10 persons participated in each school, which gave a total of 150 respondents stratified along male and female. The instrument used for data collection was researcher-developed questionnaire titled “Conditions of Service on Teachers Performance Questionnaire (CSTPQ)” on a modified four-point Likert scale. The precision and internal consistency of the instrument was determined using Cronbach reliability method which gave rise to a coefficient ranging from 0.76 - 0.83. The instrument was face validated by two experts from the Faculty of Education, Taraba State University, Jalingo; with a validation index of 0.86. The data collected was analyzed using percentage scores, mean, and standard deviation. Chi Square statistic was used to test the hypothesis at 0.05 level of significance. The result of the analysis revealed that teachers are the least paid civil servants in the State, they are not promoted as and when due, promotions were not implemented, and salaries are not paid promptly; all these negatively affected their performance. It was recommended that the State government should develop a consolidated salary structure for teachers, pay them promptly and promote and implement their promotion as and when due to enhance their job performance.