With more teachers leaving the profession than joining, improving retention rates is crucial to tackling the on-going supply challenges. The government has recently announced new plans to boost teacher retention, particularly with additional support for new teachers. Dorothy Lepkowska reports

In January, the Department for Education (DfE) published its long-awaited Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy.

A central focus of the new government strategy is teacher retention. Among the report’s four key strategic priorities, it listed the need for high quality support for early career teachers – a move welcomed by school leaders and the wider education community as a step in the right direction.

It promises to transform support for early career teachers – teachers in the first two or three years in the job – with the “most significant reforms to teaching since it became a graduate-only profession”. This is to be backed by “substantial investment” including the launch of an Early Career Framework (ECF), with an entitlement to two years of structured support for early career teachers linked to research evidence and funded time off timetable in the second year of teaching to access additional support.

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