The Impact of Incentives on Early Childhood Teachers’ Proficiency in Lubombo Region, Eswatini

Abstract

Early childhood development programmes have been found to be crucial in the development of children in physical, cognitive, socio-emotional and linguistic domains. For early childhood development (ECD) programmes to be effective, several factors need to be considered, among them human and material resources. Although the availability of the aforementioned factors is of the utmost importance, there is also a need to establish the unforeseen factors that can help ECD programmes to be more effective. Currently, there is little information regarding what can facilitate proficiency among early childhood teachers in their daily practice. This study focused on the impact of incentives on the performance of early childhood development teachers in the Lubombo region in Eswatini, formerly Swaziland. The objectives of the study were to find out the types of incentives given to ECD teachers, to examine the factors affecting the ECD teachers’ incentives and proficiency, and to explore the best ways of incentivising ECD teachers to improve their effectiveness. The research questions guiding the study were derived from the research objectives and the approach used in the study was purely qualitative. The study adopted a case study design and used unstructured questionnaires, cell phone interviews and focus group discussions as data collection tools. The research was confined to Lubombo, where a sample of 30 participants was selected. The sample included 10 ECD teachers, 10 parents and 10 administrators. The findings of the study were that ECD teachers are paid low salaries, which are not sustainable, and they are not hired by the government and so have no pensionable benefits. The study recommends that the use of incentives can improve the proficiency of early childhood teachers; ECD teachers should be paid salaries like any other teacher that are scaled according to their qualifications. Scholarships to further their studies should also be made available to them. More research is essential in areas of teachers’ proficiency and quality early childhood development programmes.