Retirement planning among senior high school teachers in the Afadzato South District

Abstract

There is unpopular belief among Ghanaians that proceeding on retirement especially in the Ghana Education Service connotes signing one‟s death warrant because of lack of preparation and poor condition of service. The main objective of the study was to assess the state of preparedness toward retirement planning among teachers in the Afadzato South District second cycle institutions and how it will guarantee their wellbeing after exiting from active employment.Homogenous sampling strategy was used to select seventeen (17) teachers in all the six second cycle schools in the district who had less than ten years to retire. An Interview Guide with semi-structured questions was used. The study showed that although there were some kinds of preparedness, it was concentrated solely on securing housing and accommodation and business ventures at retirement. The study discovered that the participants had the desire to stay in their own houses at retirement so, drastic measures were put in place to find tune to their building projects. Even though, some were in their own houses at the time of this study, majority were at various stages of completion. Self-containedhousesare the preferred dream houses to be built by the teachers. There was no much preparation toward children‟s education at retirement as the teachers had no clear plans. This was due to low salaries of the teachers coupled with so many responsibilities from extended families. It also came to light that, majority had no plan toward their health needs at retirement. It was only the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) that they subscribed unto and no extra preparation in that regard.The teachers were however hopeful that, God would give them good health at retirement. Doing business at retirement was critical to all participants so, much advance preparations were made.Majoritywasalready into some sort of business and they indicated their desire to continue it at retirement.Therefore, for holistic preparedness at retirement, measures such as periodic seminars on retirement planning for teachers and improvement packages for teachers must be considered.