Almost 40 per cent of teachers leave the profession within the first four years of returning from maternity leave, data has revealed.

Up to 20 per cent of the same cohort leave within the first year, Freedom of Information figures also show.

The Maternity Teacher/Paternity Teacher (MTPT) Project, a UK charity for parent-educators, which sourced the data for its latest report, said “thousands of experienced teachers could be retained in the profession every year with better maternity transition support”.

It comes after Tes revealed that teachers receive far less maternity pay than many others in the public sector, including Department for Education officials.

Retention rate lower in schools than NHS

Between 2016 and 2019, an average of 9,903 teachers took a period of maternity leave each academic year.

However, an average of 3,835 teachers leave the profession within the first four years of returning from maternity leave, which equates to a cumulative attrition rate of 38.6 per cent.

Attrition is defined as the rate at which teachers leave the workforce.

The first year following the return represents the greatest risk of attrition, with an average of 1,774 teachers leaving the profession during this period, or between 17 and 20 per cent.

This is more than double the rate among all female teachers in comparable age brackets.

It is also higher than the attrition rate seen in other public sector industries, including the NHS and armed forces.

Call to track maternity retention annually

Emma Sheppard, founder of MTPT, said that retaining staff returning from maternity leave would “reduce national recruitment targets, increase the number of subject-specialist teachers, improve mentoring for trainees and stabilise the quality of teaching and learning that students receive”.

She added: “Our maternity returners are essential to the health of our workforce, and more must be done to support them to remain in the profession.”

Ms Sheppard recommended that the government should provide an entitlement to coaching when mothers return from maternity leave.

She also called for maternity retention to be “tracked, published and reviewed on an annual basis”, and said that parental leave and pay should be improved and equalised for all school staff, in line with other public sector industries.

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