Increasing the supply of secondary teachers in sub-Saharan Africa: a stakeholder assessment of policy options in six countries

Over the next decade many countries of sub-Saharan Africa will face a demand for qualified secondary school teachers that current systems for teacher recruitment, training, deployment and retention will be unable to meet. While strategies for increasing teacher supply to meet this shortage have been suggested, less attention has been given to investigating the acceptability of these potential solutions by those educators closest to the school and classroom level and who often serve as gatekeepers to policy implementation. Kingdon's multiple streams model is the framework used in this study to assess the feasibility of key strategies widely offered as possible solutions to resolve the projected teacher shortage. This study investigated the responses of 114 secondary school teachers, headteachers and education officials across six countries to policy options for increasing teacher supply. While none of the groups supported options to increase the supply through changed teacher training, there was support among all three groups for options that affected retention, including increased in-service training and distance education, more mentorship for new teachers and more opportunities for teachers to network with each other. These findings suggest that policy-makers in sub-Saharan African countries need to build political support among education stakeholders to find the most feasible and viable solutions to address the large teacher shortages through both increasing supply and retention.