Teacher incentive and students’ academic achievement in public junior secondary schools in Rivers State-Nigeria

This study examined teachers’ teaching incentives and their influence on public Junior secondary schools students’ academic achievement in Rivers State. Three research questions and three hypotheses addressed the study. An instrument titled “Teacher Incentives and Students’ Academic Achievement Questionnaire” (TISAAQ) was utilized to gather data for analyses. A sample of 213 teachers was simple randomly selected from a target population of 5, 320 teachers in 5 out of 23 local government areas in public junior secondary schools in Rivers State. Tables were constructed, means and standard deviation were computed to provide answers to the three research questions while the Pearson Product Moment Correlation Co-efficient was used to test the three hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The results revealed amongst others that teacher’ emoluments and educational resources as teacher incentives variables do to a low extent enhance students’ academic achievement; due to ineffective practices of the teacher's employees on these variables; and that there is significant relationship between teachers’ participation in schools based decision making as teacher incentive and students’ academic achievement. The study concluded that teachers’ employers should always see the need to stimulate or encourage teachers through various incentives as very expedient. The study therefore recommended principally that greater attention be given to teachers’ work conditions to enhance students’ academic achievement in public junior secondary schools in Rivers State, Nigeria.