Recruitment in Ghana Education Service: Perspectives of senior high school teachers in the Gomoa East District

Abstract

The issue of recruitment confines to attract the attention of researchers. In Ghana, one of the public institutions that are said to employ a lot of people in the public sector is Ghana Education Service (GES). However, their method of recruitment has attracted a lot of public concern. People continue to critique the methods used to attract and retain staff. It is against this background that the study sought to investigate the recruitment methods in the GES in the Senior High Schools (SHSs,) in the Gomoa East District. The Gomoa East District was chosen because it is a newly created district that could have newly posted teachers as well as old teachers and also close to the researcher. To achieve this, the descriptive designed was used. The sample size comprised of 80 SHSs graduate professional and nonprofessional teachers. Data were collected through questionnaires from teachers about recruitment methods, commonly used recruitment methods and challenges in recruitment. The study found that GES has a formal policy. The findings show that there is poor interpersonal treatment, poor timely feedback, and a lack of policy and selection biases in GES recruitment. Others are the involvement of agents, lack of transparency, discrimination, high cost in recruitment and poor quality of staff in GES recruitment. The study indicated that the common methods used in the recruitment of GES are job posting, internet, newspaper advertisements, social media, direct application and college recruitment. It was recommended that in order to hire the best teacher for the job, the organization should make a formal workable recruitment policy.