Time to Teach
Project | Teacher attendance and time on task in Africa
Quality education starts with teachers: they must be present and engaged for learning to take place. But according to recent evidence, in certain parts of Africa, teacher attendance rates remain alarmingly low. When students are without teachers – an essential prerequisite to learning – they are less likely to meet foundational numeracy and literacy goals. Available data from 21 African countries shows that, on average, 87 per cent of students are unable to read and understand a simple text by the end of primary school age. This alarming statistic is reflective of a complex set of contributing factors, but also highlights the need to address one of the most critical ones: teacher attendance.
Low teacher attendance and reduced time on task not only short-changes students, but it also wastes valuable financial resources and is one of the most cumbersome obstacles on the path toward the education Sustainable Development Goal and to the related vision of the UNICEF education strategy: Every Child Learns.
In response, UNICEF launched the Time to Teach (TTT) research project, with the primary objective to identify factors affecting various forms of teacher attendance, which include:
- Being at school
- Being punctual
- Being in the classroom
- Teaching when in the classroom and use this evidence to inform the design and implementation of teachers policies
There are many valid reasons for a teacher to be absent, however this study does not distinguish between authorized and unauthorized absences, as its goal is to capture the total loss of time on task (during the school year), irrespective of the validity of the reasons for teachers’ absences.
Countries involved in the study
The Time to Teach study gathers data from 21 countries and territories in sub-Saharan Africa. The study draws on quantitative survey responses from over 3000 teachers, as well as from qualitative data collection, capturing the voices of educators, head teachers, community representatives, national and local level officials, teacher union representatives, and students.
Research objectives
The key objectives of the study were to:
- Identify factors, both within and outside the education system, that affect primary school teacher attendance and time on task in the eight countries covered
- Examine variations and commonalities in the determinants of teacher attendance in different national settings as well as in different types of schools (e.g. public/private) and locations (e.g. rural/urban)
- Recognize promising policies and practices in improving teacher motivation, attendance and time on task, and encourage cross-country learning and policy transfer within the ESA region.
The report aims to answer the following questions:
- How frequently are teachers absent?
- Which schools and teachers are more likely to experience absences?
- Why are teachers absent?
- What are the promising practices and potential recommendations for policymaking?
Methods
Time to Teach takes a systems approach towards explaining teacher attendance and therefore examines the relevance of factors at all levels of the education system, including the national, sub-national, community, school, and teacher levels. The study also evaluates whether factors outside of the education system may have an important role to play in determining teacher attendance. All of these factors are analyzed in-depth at the regional and country level (please see the key findings for each region below). Corresponding policy priorities and recommendations are made, depending on the context.
The Time to Teach Explanatory Model
Factors affecting teacher attendance
Education system factors |
Non-system factors |
| Teacher monitoring | Health |
| Teacher training | Family obligations |
| Teacher salaries, benefits and career development | Weather |
| Teacher workload, recruitment and allocation |
Community infrastructure |
| School resources and infrastructure | Conflict |
Promising practices and recommendations
Insights from the field on promising practices – i.e. interventions by governments and development partners that may have the potential to bring about positive change and sustainably improve teacher attendance and time on task.
Teacher monitoring
- Ensure that all head teachers in public and private schools have access to training courses and tools on school leadership and teacher management. This includes teacher monitoring and oversight, curriculum implementation and supervision, instructional leadership and resource mobilization.
- Increase the frequency of school inspections, especially in rural and remote areas.
- Boost parental and community involvement, especially at low-income and rural public schools, as a way of improving teacher accountability and attendance.
- Improve system coherence and ensure that all actors engaged in teacher monitoring are aware of their roles and core responsibilities and understand how these are shared between levels of authority.
- Explore the use of technology in ensuring high levels of teacher school attendance.
- Intensify efforts to address multiple forms of teacher absences. Few countries have developed frameworks for systematically monitoring forms of absences other than school absence.
Teacher training
- Reform the pre-service teacher training model and curriculum to ensure that it is in tandem with the school curriculum and children’s needs and that it contains a strong practical component that includes teaching practice in schools and extensive practice in competency-based learning.
- Provide continuous and high-quality in-service training and ensure that all teachers have an equal chance of being selected to attend professional development courses.
- Ensure that in-service training does not conflict with classroom hours, as it is difficult for teachers to make up for missed lessons and achieve effective curriculum implementation.
- Suptime on task by offering classroom-based in-service training: teachers can get support for supervisors or their colleagues during lessons. School-based training sessions that pull teachers from classrooms are another option, but substitute teachers are needed to cover classrooms, which is not always possible where there are teacher shortages.
Teacher remuneration and career progression
- Ensure the timely payment of salaries and remove obstacles to receiving pay.
- Consider boosting other important components of teacher motivation, such as by establishing a clear career progression path for the teaching profession.
- Ensure that salary reforms are well designed to avoid the risk of salary increases being inefficient or adversely affecting teacher motivation.
- Clearly define criteria for measuring teaching effectiveness when linking teacher performance to bonuses or higher salaries.
- Provide material rewards and incentives that do not encourage additional side work and do not distract teachers from their teaching duties.
Teacher workload, recruitment, and allocation
- Strengthen the enforcement of teacher allocation rules.
- Develop incentive strategies to make postings in rural and hardship areas more attractive.
- Provide incentives to increase the representation of female teachers, especially in rural areas.
- Consider decentralizing teacher deployment and allocation.
- Use data-driven allocation systems to inform planning and decision-making in education.
School resources and infrastructure
- Provide adequate teaching and learning materials, such as student textbooks accompanied with guidance materials for teachers.
- Develop an online platform to provide teaching and learning resources, which can be critical during times of school closures.
Potential solutions to external challenges
Collaboration between ministries of education, ministries of public works and transport, and local government is especially important, as poor infrastructure in the community limits teachers’ ability to carry out their duties. Special attention needs to be given to providing reliable transportation and functioning roads to improve teacher school attendance and discourage lateness. Ensuring decent housing conditions for teachers is also key for staffing schools in areas where housing options are limited or rental costs too high. Working in collaboration with parents and local communities on reinforcing school infrastructure (e.g. by replacing iron-sheet roofs) could help to reduce weather-induced classroom absences and increase time on task. Adapting school calendars to more localized climatic conditions is another solution to reduce weather-related absences and reduction of time on task.
Working in partnership with ministries of health is crucial for addressing inadequate health care and prevention programmes that affect teacher time on task. While malaria and HIV/AIDS are common causes of poor health among teachers in this study, their occurrence varies across districts and schools and therefore they require a needs-based approach. This involves working with development partners on establishing or scaling up school-based health programmes that are locally owned and incorporate some form of community involvement (to ensure sustainability). In areas affected by conflict, education and health ministries could work together to provide counselling services to teachers.
In countries facing security concerns, ministries of education could strengthen cooperation with police and security forces, civil society organizations, and local communities to increase the number of guards stationed at schools. Guards and escorts, who accompany teachers to and from school, have been used to encourage teacher school attendance in many conflict-affected settings with some success.
Ministries of education could also work with line ministries and development partners to improve school safety infrastructure, including by building boundary walls and installing safety and security equipment. However, it is important that efforts to strengthen school security do not ‘militarize’ schools or give them an intimidating appearance, as this could further reduce teacher attendance.
Recommendations for further research
Promising avenues for further research, which governments, development partners and researchers may consider, include the following:
- Strengthening the existing evidence base on the links between teacher allocation, their attendance, and student learning outcomes.
- Investing in more gendered analyses of absences.
- Expanding research on teacher attendance at faith-based schools, among special needs teachers and for teachers serving refugee and nomadic populations.
- Expanding research on teacher attendance and time on task to other education levels.
- Strengthening the emerging evidence when teachers adapted to school closures during COVID-19.
