ABSTRACT
The ageing population (i.e., people aged 60 years and above) in the world has been recorded as 962 million in 2017, and that number is expected to double by 2050, projecting to reach 2.1 billion (United Nations, 2017). Among the South Asian countries, Sri Lanka is the fastest aging country (Vodopivec & Arunatilake, 2011). Sri Lankan population projections revealed that in 1981 there were one million elderly people, which accounted for 6.6 per cent of the entire population, and in 2016, it was 14 per cent out of 21 million total (De Silva, 2007). Further, the projection indicated that this number will rise to 6.3 million in 2050, accounting for 27.4 per cent of the total population. The demographic structure in Sri Lanka indicated a sharp decline in fertility and mortality rates, along with rising longevity (Siddhisena & DeGraff, 2009; Vodopivec & Arunatilake, 2011; Taylor, Perera, & Storey, 2012), leading to a shrinking younger generation and a booming elderly population in the country. Demographic changes imply to the labour market the significance of recruitment for an organization in the future, particularly transforming the ageing challenge into an opportunity of an untapped pool of labour. Nevertheless, the extant literature revealed that age stereotypical attitudes and discriminatory practices among employers close the doors to elderly employees in the labour market (Shacklock, 2002; Van Dalen, Henkens, & Schippers, 2009; Kadefors & Hanse, 2012; Axelrad, Luski, & Miki, 2013).
Therefore, this study intends to examine the recruitment practices towards elderly teachers (ETs) in the private sector schools in Sri Lanka. The employment of elderly/retired teachers is one of the measurements that has been exemplified by the schools that are facing a scarcity of teachers in many other countries (Bal & Visser, 2011; Martinez, Frick, Kim, & Fried, 2010; Botwinik & Press, 2006; Redman & Snape, 2002), which is currently adopted in many private sector schools in Sri Lanka as well (Madhuwanthi, 2016). For the private sector schools, this study considered only unaided private schools and international schools in Sri Lanka. This is mainly a qualitative study based on primary data, which were collected through semi-structured in-depth interviews with 10 interviewees representing 10 private schools. The interviewees were directors and principals of those schools. Further, the interview data were supported by survey data collected from unaided private schools and international schools in Sri Lanka.
The findings of the study revealed that when recruiting ETs, the effective recruitment sources were personal referrals (where personal networks and contacts are used in the education sector) and internal recruitments (which fill the vacancies through the internal arrangement of extending the service of teachers who are about to retire). Also, those schools used vacancy advertisements, yet many of them stated that they did include an age limit in the vacancy advertisements for teachers, which is an age discriminatory practice adopted in private sector schools. The frequent age limits included in the advertisements range from 45 to 65 years. However, the recruitment message in the advertisements of a few schools reflected a direct affirmative action for ETs by openly inviting them to apply beyond their retirement age. One such excerpt from a newspaper advertisement for teachers was that “retired government teachers can also apply”. Besides the age clause, it was not found that “indirect” ways of implying the age of the candidate through specific content, such as wordings and terms in the advertisements, were preventing ETs from applying. Further, it was revealed that e-recruitment practices, such as career opportunities in the school websites and job websites, were not that popular among the ETs.
