THE POST QUALIFICATION TRAINING AND JOB PERFORMANCE OF TEACHERS IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background to the Study

Education is a critical tool for national development, and governments throughout the world are working hard to spend heavily in it. Individuals may be emancipated from the humiliations of human rights violations with proper education. Furthermore, individual liberty is ensured, and the path to economic liberation is paved. Furthermore, educated folks quickly comprehend and support government policies that are in line with the desire of the people and are beneficial to overall national development. The literary level of its citizens is one of the indicators of a developed nation (Adeyegbe, 2005).

A country is considered underdeveloped when the vast majority of its citizens are illiterate. A nation is considered developed when the majority of its citizens are literate. The education system both creates and impacts the nation's workforce demands, as well as its technical growth. As a result, education must be considered as functional and relevant to the requirements of the people and the nation, and the nation develops strength via personnel development for all of its productive enterprises (Abolama, 1999 and Edet, 1999).

In accordance with the foregoing arguments, the nation's educational demands must be'manned' by competent and well-trained professionals who will be successful and efficient. Organizations, such as schools, require people in addition to raw resources and equipment to function well. As a result, managers frequently recognize. "Our most valuable asset is our employees." Human resource planning is undertaken by organizations in order to satisfy future 'people's' needs in the same manner that non-human resource planning is undertaken (Armstron, 2003).

Because of the multiple factors involved, deciding whether or not to teach an establishment's personnel has always been a time-consuming procedure. Finance, service time, and general service working conditions are examples of such elements. In a developing country such as Nigeria, such variables sometimes overshadow the primary goal of training and development. Instructional is a dynamic profession, and educators must stay current on advancements in teaching methods, administration, and environmental issues. Teachers working in the education business will have a baseline qualification that will need to be supplemented with further training and development activities.

According to Aina (2005), "education is designed to improve the overall competence of the employee in a specific direction and beyond the job currently held, and training is an experience, a discipline, or a systematic action that causes people to acquire new skills and knowledge, and exhibit pre-determined behavior on the current job."

This may be true if the employee is new to the organization or if the organization's technology changes. Aina goes on to say, "Staff development is concerned with training personnel to move with the company as it develops, evolves, and expands."

While streamlining the contributions of some scholars, Ayo-Sobowale (2002) asserts that education generalizes by providing individuals with the basic knowledge, skills, and attitudes required to qualify for a given position, whereas training focuses on improved competences required to perform in various positions. Staff development, on the other hand, enables the employee to undertake increased duties that come with higher positions along the professional path.

Teachers today demand more than just school credentials; they also need to update their expertise on a regular basis. According to Olaniyanu (2006), who shares Fafunwa's viewpoint, the issues facing today's teachers are as follows:

Today's teacher has bigger obstacles than his predecessors, and his job as a classroom manager has become more complex. To be effective, today's teacher must expand his activities outside the classroom and the school property, because the world of the kid today has broader and more diverse vistas than the world of Plato and Aristotle. Pp23.

From the above, it is clear that professional teacher training and growth are essential for the system to be relevant to its aims and purposes.

Figure 1.2 Education, Training, and Development Relationship

Ayo-Sobowale is the source (2002)

Furthermore, staff training and development of instructors offers several benefits such as better learning rates, improved performance quality, fewer accidents or casualties, and lower labor turnover and absenteeism. As a result, the purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of post-qualification training on job performance in Lagos State secondary schools.

1.2 Statement of the Problem

The performance gap between educational standards and present performance levels decides whether training or non-training is required. According to Ogunsola (2005), recent data from the West African Examination Council (WAEC) and the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) show that less than 10% of those who sat for the West African Senior Secondary Certificate Examination (WASSCE) met the matriculation requirements, and one out of every ten who applied for the University Matriculation Examination (UME) was admitted to tertiary institutions.

Under these conditions, the percentage of waste is enormous. According to Ogunsola (2005), most individuals agree that the level of education has not deteriorated, but student performance has been continuously declining.

What is undeniable is that stakeholders must enable teachers to guide and motivate all pupils to study. The challenge is, how can we prepare, train, support, and retain our teachers, in particular, for the multiple duties in the classroom?

Teachers, according to Adeyegbe (2005), should not rest on their laurels. They must build on the lessons obtained throughout training and thereby learn from personal experiences of the current generation, which is more rigorous and multi-faceted in comparison to previous generations. Demands are not identical, nor are their responses to the varied situations in their surroundings, according to Adeyegbe (2005). The decrease is visible, and the educational system is blamed.

Staff development and training have the potential to have a major good and negative impact on teachers' job performance and, as a result, pupils' academic attainment. Perhaps a lack of well-articulated staff development and training for secondary school teachers contributed to bad teacher attitudes and, as a result, low levels of job performance in the state. Students may benefit more from the schools' instructional program if teachers are updated through workshops, seminars, conferences, and training at institutions after employment (entrant qualifications). If, on the other hand, teachers are not kept up to date in terms of knowledge acquisition, pupils may fail public tests and the school system may fail to meet its goals and objectives. Against this backdrop, this study investigates the impact of post-qualification training on job performance in Lagos State secondary schools, with a focus on a few schools in Education District V.

1.3 Purpose of the Study

The major objective of this study is to examine the effect of post qualification training on teachers’ job performance. While other specific objectives are:

i. To examine the effect of staff development on teachers’ productivity in Lagos State;

ii. To investigate the impact of staff training on teachers’ effectiveness in Lagos State Public Secondary Schools;

iii. To find out the effect of teachers’ welfare on teachers performance.

1.4 Research Questions

This study will be guided by the following research questions:

1. What is the relationship between staff development and teachers’ productivity in Lagos State?

2. Does staff training impact on teachers’ effectiveness in Lagos State Public Secondary Schools?

3. To what extent does teachers’ welfare influence teachers’ performance?

1.5 Significance of the Study

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of an in-service training program on employee job performance and to emphasize the value of this program to both workers and public organizations. According to Ngwira (2005), staff training is both costly and disruptive to the organization's timetable.

Employee training aimed at improving job performance in relation to organizational performance (Hayes, 1996). Because both types of training strive to increase performance, it makes sense to combine them so that the performance management process can determine which kind of training will be most beneficial in a specific circumstance. As a result, this study evaluated the effects of In-service Training programs on job performance and is expected to broaden the perspectives of educational partners and researchers on different training styles and performance in order to improve in-service training for teachers.

1.6 Scope of the Study

The study assessed the impact of In-service training on teachers performance and motivation. 70 secondary school teachers were selected through random sampling method. A qualitative approach with a case study design was used which provided a valid information. The questionnaire method was used as a tool for data collection.

1.7 Limitation of the Study

Every research is unique and has various theoretical and practical problems which are different from other researches. This study was limited in its findings in the following ways: Firstly some questions (items) included in the study has diverted to the attention of the respondents and thus interferes with thinking, response and findings of the study.

Secondly, the sample size was limited to only 70 teachers of six schools at Lagos State. This may not be a good representation of the majority of Nigerian secondary school teachers, hence could affect the significant relationships from the data generalizability of the findings. However, above mentioned limitations were minimized pilot test that was conducted before entire study was undertaken.

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