Abstract
Many teachers refuse posting to rural schools in Ghana because they are not willing to live in rural areas. This denies rural schools of teachers who could teach to raise student achievement, particularly in the West Africa Senior Secondary Certificate Examination, which qualifies senior high school (SHS) graduates for higher education in Ghana. To understand the pull factors that could motivate teachers accept to live and work in rural areas, and the push factors that could influence teachers to transfer from rural to urban schools, we adopted the qualitative-quantitative research approach with interview, questionnaire administration and observation to solicit data from 120 teachers (19 females; 101 males), 757 SHS 2 students (306 females; 451 males), and two Headmasters (males) in two public SHSs in rural Afigya-Kwabre West district of Ashanti Region and the Deputy District Director of Planning and Statistics. Findings from these rural schools revealed that job/personal/property security, early release of teachers for study leave, respect and recognition for teachers, and a peaceful rural environment are the major pull factors that motivate SHS teachers in rural Afigya-Kwabre West district to stay. However, compromised job/personal/property security, and lack of additional sources of income are significant push factors that threaten their retention. Moreover, it is evident from the study that when a rural Senior High School teacher vacates post, there is a high possibility of students experiencing a decline in their academic performance in that particular subject area, the following year. Contrary to this, when Senior High School teachers in a rural area are highly motivated to stay, then, there is a high possibility of an increase in students‟ academic performance in the subsequent year. We believe that rural posting would be attractive to SHS teachers in Ghana if the government of Ghana improves the living and working conditions of teachers in rural areas and implements the 20% of basic salary allowance recommended by the Anamuah-Mensah education review committee in 2002 to compensate teachers in rural Ghana.
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