Teachers who stay in teaching tend to earn more than those who leave the profession, according to new research.
A National Foundation for Educational Research report, published by the Office of Manpower Economics this week, also suggests that other factors such as workload and opportunities for part-time and flexible working could be “more significant factors” for teachers who are considering leaving.
However, the study emphasises that this does not mean that changes to teacher salary would have no impact on retention of the workforce, as the DfE considers teacher pay over the next two years.
NFER economist Jack Worth, a joint author on the report, said that the competitiveness of teacher pay was lower in 2019 than in 2010, indicating “that pay is likely to have been, at least in part, a contributory factor to teacher leaving rates worsening in the period after 2010”.
Overall, the report suggests that although the earnings of teachers who left teaching for another job grew immediately after their departure, they “may well have been higher had they stayed”.
Teachers who quit the profession ‘unlikely to earn more’
In particular, the research shows that female, primary or experienced teachers saw a greater fall in their earnings trajectory after leaving the profession, when compared with similar “non-leavers”.
Joint authors Mr Worth and Dawson McLean said: “While this may suggest that pay is not a major factor for teachers’ decisions about whether or not to stay, our results do not necessarily imply that retention is unaffected by changes to teachers’ pay.”
The research, which looked at 30 years of longitudinal teacher-level data, primarily using the Office for National Statistics Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) panel dataset, also found that more than two-thirds (72 per cent) of teachers who left the state sector for another job remained working in the wider education and childcare sector after leaving.
It also found that only 2 per cent of leavers moved into a different professional occupation straight away, with only 3 per cent working in a different professional occupation after 10 years.
Teachers who left also tended to change their working patterns, with greater movement from full-time into part-time work rather than the other way around.
The report says that teacher supply challenges had been eased by the Covid-induced recession, but the effects were “short-term”.
Data released by the DfE earlier this week revealed that initial teacher training applications had fallen by 23 per cent compared with last year, following a surge in applications last year.
A “longer-term question of whether the existing level and structure of teacher pay will be adequate for attracting and retaining sufficient numbers of high-quality teachers once the wider labour market recovers” needs to be looked at, the NEFR researchers said.
The report also warns that the government’s three-year plan for raising the pay of early career teachers, without increasing the salaries of more experienced teachers, could reduce “the incentive to progress and take on extra responsibility, which would need careful consideration alongside the effects on teacher supply”.
