School Leaders’ Preferences on School Location in Sierra Leone: An individual and school-level study

Attracting qualified teachers to remote areas is a challenge in Sierra Leone. The pupil-to-qualified-teacher ratio in rural areas is 76:1, rising to 83:1 for schools located more than 15 km away from urban centres — well above the national target of 40:1. As equitable teacher deployment is crucial to ensure high-quality education, the Teaching Service Commission (TSC) aims to increase the deployment of qualified teachers to the most remote areas of the country. This paper describes a quantitative survey of school leaders’ perceptions of what shapes school location preferences and what factors need to be in place (i.e., incentives) to address the imbalanced distribution of qualified teachers in the country. We used data from a text message survey sent to school leaders around the country. This paper accompanies a qualitative inquiry on the same topic: What Matters Most for Teacher Deployment? A case study on teacher school choice preferences in Sierra Leone. Together with the qualitative study, our findings aim to address a gap in empirical evidence on teacher school preferences in Sierra Leone and contribute to a growing literature on teachers’ preferences in low- and middle-income countries. An output of the EdTech Hub, https://edtechhub.org

DOI: 10.53832/edtechhub.0106