New Ghanaian study in Social Justice Research finds how teachers are treated matters more than what they are paid.
Our elders say when you climb a good tree, you deserve a push. In Ghana we have spent years talking about the tree – the buildings, textbooks, and salaries.
We have spoken less about the push – the way decisions are made and how teachers are treated while they do the work. Our study, now published in Social Justice Research, followed 399 teachers in public senior secondary schools in the Greater Accra Region.
We asked a question that matters for our context: in schools where resources are tight and most rewards are decided far from the school gate, what keeps a teacher committed?
Three Ways Teachers Judge Fairness
We looked at fairness from three angles. First, fairness in what is received. Does pay, allowance, workload and promotion match effort?
Second, fairness in how decisions are made. Are transfers, postings, appraisals and discipline handled transparently, consistently, with room for teachers to be heard? Third, fairness in daily treatment. Do heads and supervisors speak with respect, explain honestly, and affirm professional dignity?
Why Process Outweighs Pay In Our Schools
Fairness in how decisions are made showed the strongest link to teacher performance. When teachers believed the rules were clear and applied without favoritism, they invested more in preparation, classroom management and timely delivery.
Fairness in what is received mattered, but modestly. In our centralized system where salary is set nationally, an extra allowance may ease pressure but does not by itself create attachment to teaching. Fairness in daily treatment alone did not directly lift performance. A respectful headteacher inside an unpredictable system can only do so much. As our elders warn, when you leave a matter unattended outside, it eventually goes bad. Occasional kindness cannot replace a credible system.
The Quiet Power of Loving The Work
At the center of our work is professional love – the emotional bond, care and commitment teachers develop toward the profession and their students. It is not sentiment.
It is what makes a teacher mark at midnight, stay after school to coach a struggling child, and remain in the classroom when other jobs beckon. That love was built far more by how people were treated than by what they received. Respectful daily interaction had the strongest link to professional love, followed by fair procedures.
When teachers felt respected and understood the rules governing their careers, attachment deepened. That attachment was strongly linked to better performance. Professional love also acted as the bridge. It carried the influence of fair procedures and respectful treatment to performance.
It did not carry the influence of fair rewards. In a context where rewards are seen as decided by a distant authority, getting more does not make teachers love the work more. Being treated fairly does. There is a saying that one hand cannot lift a heavy load. Teacher performance is that heavy load. It is not lifted by pay alone. It is lifted when teachers feel seen, heard and respected.
What Government and Education Service Must Rethink
For those who make policy at the Ministry of Education and the Ghana Education Service, the lesson is plain. First, publish and standardize procedures. Criteria for transfers, postings, promotions and appraisals should be written, accessible, consistently applied, and open to appeal.
When teachers know the rules and see them applied equally, trust grows. Trust in process allows teachers to focus on teaching instead of navigating informal networks. Second, turn supervision into support.
How supervisors speak, explain and correct matters more than we admit. A framework that requires timely feedback, private correction and adequate explanation costs little and returns much. As the proverb goes, the child who breaks the snail is not the one who suffered to pick it.
Those who do not carry the burden of teaching should be careful how they judge it. Third, think beyond money when you think about welfare. Material incentives remain important but incomplete without fairness in process and treatment. A teacher who receives an allowance but is transferred without explanation or corrected with public humiliation is unlikely to turn that allowance into better learning for children.
What Heads Can Do Before The Next Assembly
Heads of schools and department heads may not control payroll, but they control climate. You control whether appraisals happen on time and with evidence.
You control whether teaching loads are shared with clear reasons. You control whether correction affirms dignity. These everyday choices are not administrative footnotes. In our study they were the strongest predictors of emotional commitment. Schools that build mentorship, peer collaboration and regular feedback that makes impact visible create conditions where commitment can be sustained.
As elders say, the ruin of a nation begins in the homes of its people. In the same way, the strength of a school begins in the staff common room. Where respect is absent, even well paid teachers experience fairness as random and commitment becomes fragile.
A Word For Teachers Themselves
For teachers, this research affirms something many know in their bones. Commitment is not bought. It is nurtured. Professional love stabilizes effort when resources are scarce and policies shift. Yet that love is not endless. When systems treat teachers as interchangeable units rather than professionals, the link between love and performance weakens.
Systems that measure teachers without understanding their work slowly erode the motivation they want to increase. That is why unions, subject associations and Colleges of Education must advocate not only for better pay but for better processes and more humane treatment. They must demand transparent procedures and model the respectful cultures new teachers will carry into schools.
Where We Go From Here
The future of this country is written in its classrooms, and the quality of those classrooms cannot be separated from how we treat those who stand in them. Our study does not claim resources do not matter.
They do. It shows that in Ghanaian senior secondary schools, where schools have limited control over rewards, fairness in procedures and fairness in daily interaction show stronger links to professional love and sustained effort than fairness in outcomes alone.
If we want teachers to teach with love, we must lead with fairness. When the system is fair, teachers give it their heart. When teachers give their heart, students receive their best.
By Dr. Ebenezer Arthur Duncan
The writer is a lecturer at University of Professional Studies, Marketing Department
