Best Practice

Retention: Practical steps to avoid driving new teachers out of teaching

The retention rate of NQTs and RQTs continues to fall. How can we mitigate against inadvertently driving new teachers out of the profession? Maria Cunningham draws on recent cross-sector discussions to offer practical advice – both to school leaders and NQTs

The NFER’s annual Teacher Labour Market in England report (Worth et al, 2020) shows that schools continue to face "significant challenges" in recruiting and retaining a sufficient number of teachers.

Based on data collected prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, a particularly worrying finding is that the retention rate of NQTs into their second year of teaching has continued to fall, as has the rate for second years going into their third year.

If this was the state of affairs in a pre-Covid world, what does this mean for teacher recruitment and retention amid the shifting sands of our current context, which is nothing like any teachers have experienced in their careers to date?

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