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There is no proven universal winner. The strongest current evidence from England points to a targeted workload strategy—adequate, useful lesson-planning time, less time lost to behaviour, pastoral and pupil-data tasks, and supportive school leadership—alongside satisfactory pay. Higher pay is associated with slightly lower turnover, but the estimated effect is small. Smaller classes may have educational or staffing advantages, yet a direct class-size effect on teacher retention has not been established in the available studies.

These findings are associations, not a causal league table. A raise, a timetable change or a smaller class could produce different results in different subjects, phases, schools and career stages. The practical question is therefore not which single lever wins, but which combination addresses the reasons teachers in a particular setting are considering a move or an exit.

What the latest evidence actually measures

The detailed England analysis

The most specific current study is the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) report What helps to improve teacher retention? A pathway analysis of factors affecting retention, published in February 2026. It links teacher survey responses with administrative data in England. Its retention sample contains 8,964 teachers, including 729 classified as leavers (8.1%). The main multivariate analysis is smaller because some records lack the required information.

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The analysis is cross-sectional. It identifies relationships between reported working conditions and leaving, but it cannot show that changing one condition would cause a particular retention gain. Unmeasured factors may influence both a teacher’s responses and their decision to leave. The authors call for rigorous evaluation of interventions rather than treating the estimates as guaranteed effects.

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The wider review

A 2026 systematic review of reviews by Kenneth Leithwood, Qing Gu and Sofia Eleftheriadou reaches a similar practical conclusion from a broader body of work: retention factors usually interact inside the school organization. Leadership affects how workload, support, pay and pupil behaviour are experienced. The review also notes inconsistent definitions and methods, limited direct testing of theories, insufficient attention to teachers’ personal goals and an incomplete understanding of which leadership practices work best.

Its central warning is worth keeping in view: “Teacher retention policies and practice are likely to be much more successful when they acknowledge the complex interactive nature of most retention factors, as well as the central role of the school organization and its leadership in influencing how these factors connect to impact teachers’ decision to move schools or leave teaching.”

What the 2021 choice study adds

A 2021 England discrete-choice study for the Office for the Pay Review Bodies and Office of Manpower Economics estimated how teachers valued pay, rewards and other job characteristics in stated choices. It is useful for comparing preferences within a common design, but it measures hypothetical choices and predates the 2026 task-level analysis. It should inform priorities, not be read as an observed retention impact.

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Quick comparison: pay, planning time and class size

Change What the evidence shows What it does not show Practical design implication
Higher pay The 2026 review finds higher salaries associated with lower rates of leaving teaching and moving schools. The NFER analysis finds higher pay satisfaction associated with a lower leaving rate. It does not establish the retention gain from a particular raise, or that pay alone will keep teachers in difficult-to-staff schools. The review describes the salary-turnover effect as statistically significant but small, with a point estimate close to one. Use pay to address dissatisfaction and recruitment pressure, while pairing it with changes to working conditions and support.
More planning time Teachers reporting too much lesson-planning time and those reporting too little both had significantly higher leaving rates. The signal is for adequate, useful time, not simply more hours. The association does not prove that adding a fixed number of planning periods will reduce exits. A product or curriculum resource has not been shown here to improve retention. Protect sufficient planning time, improve access to high-quality curriculum materials and remove avoidable planning burden.
Smaller classes No reviewed source provides a direct estimate that reducing class size improves teacher retention. It cannot be presented as a proven retention intervention on this evidence. Educational effects and staffing consequences are separate questions. Assess class-size changes for their educational and workforce effects, but evaluate retention separately.

Does higher teacher pay keep teachers in the profession?

Pay matters, but the available estimates support a modest and conditional interpretation. The 2026 review of reviews reports that higher salaries are associated with lower probabilities of leaving teaching and of moving schools. It characterizes the average relationship as small. In the NFER pathway analysis, satisfaction with pay—not a tested experimental raise—was associated with a lower leaving rate.

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NFER also reports that approximately 50–60% of teachers who left cited dissatisfaction with pay, drawing on Working Lives of Teachers and Leaders data. That figure identifies a commonly reported reason; it does not imply that increasing every teacher’s salary by a particular amount would retain the same proportion.

Pay may be especially relevant where salaries lag local alternatives, housing costs are high or a school struggles to recruit a subject specialist. However, a financial intervention can leave the daily causes of frustration untouched. A teacher who is paid more but still lacks control over planning, receives little help with disruptive behaviour or spends evenings on data tasks may remain at risk of leaving.

One-off retention bonuses deserve caution. The 2026 review reports no clear benefit in the reviewed evidence for keeping teachers in the profession or in hard-to-staff schools. A bonus can still be a deliberate recruitment or recognition tool, but it should not be assumed to substitute for a sustainable job design.

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Would more planning time help teachers stay?

Planning time is the most nuanced of the three options. In the NFER model, both extremes were associated with higher leaving rates: teachers who said they spent too much time on lesson planning had a significantly higher leaving rate, and so did teachers who said they spent too little. This pattern suggests that the goal is enough time to prepare effective lessons without allowing preparation to become an uncontrolled workload sink.

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Which tasks show the clearest workload signals?

NFER estimated associations for several reported tasks. A 10-percentage-point increase in teachers reporting too much time on a task was associated with the following changes in the leaving rate:

Task reported as taking too much time Associated change in leaving rate How to interpret it
Lesson planning 0.068 percentage points higher Modelled association, not a causal effect.
Behaviour 0.050 percentage points higher Suggests that behaviour support and workload control belong in the same retention plan.
Pastoral support 0.049 percentage points higher Indicates a need to examine pastoral allocation and backup.
Pupil data 0.020 percentage points higher Points to the burden and usability of data processes, not merely the number of systems.

The report found only a very small estimated retention association for marking. General administration had no estimated total retention effect in its model. That does not mean administration is harmless in every school; it means a blanket promise to “cut admin” may miss the specific tasks most closely associated with leaving in this analysis.

Why simply cutting hours is not enough

Reducing total weekly working time by one hour was associated with a 0.003-percentage-point reduction in the leaving rate. NFER calls this effect meaningless. The implication is not that hours are irrelevant, but that a total-hours target is too blunt. Two teachers can work the same number of hours while one has predictable planning time and useful support and the other spends evenings rebuilding materials, responding to behaviour incidents and entering duplicative data.

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The Department for Education’s 2019 strategy captured the distinction: “Teacher workload is too high and this has been a long-standing issue. But workload is not simply about number of hours worked; it is also about teachers feeling in control of their work.”

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What an effective planning-time policy looks like

  • Protect usable blocks: schedule planning periods that are not routinely taken for cover, meetings or urgent administration.
  • Set a clear purpose: distinguish lesson design, assessment preparation and collaborative planning from compliance paperwork.
  • Provide dependable materials: a central source of high-quality curriculum materials was identified in earlier NFER workload work as an enabler. This evidence does not prove that buying a particular planning product improves retention.
  • Reduce rework: agree what “good enough” planning looks like and avoid requiring multiple formats for the same lesson.
  • Give teachers influence: let teams decide which materials to adapt and which processes to stop, then check whether perceived control improves.

Does smaller class size improve teacher retention?

Not on the evidence reviewed for this comparison. Neither the 2026 NFER pathway analysis nor the 2026 review of reviews supplies a direct estimate linking a reduction in class size to a lower teacher leaving rate.

Class size can affect pupil experience, classroom workload, timetabling, staffing requirements and expenditure. Those are legitimate policy questions, but they should not be converted into a retention claim without measuring teacher moves and exits. A smaller class may feel helpful in one setting and fail to address the main pressure in another—for example, if behaviour support is weak or planning is fragmented.

If a school introduces smaller classes partly to improve retention, it should define the retention outcome in advance and track it separately from attainment or behaviour outcomes. Without that design, an apparent improvement cannot be attributed to the class-size change.

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Leaving teaching is different from changing schools

Retention decisions have at least two outcomes: moving to another school and leaving the profession. A policy can reduce one without reducing the other. For example, a teacher may stay in teaching but transfer from a high-pressure school, or remain at a school for a year because of a payment and leave later.

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Every comparison should therefore specify:

  • Outcome: profession exit, school move, or both.
  • Timing: immediate, one-year, and longer-term retention.
  • Population: early-career teachers, experienced staff, shortage subjects, phases and difficult-to-staff schools.
  • Experience: whether teachers report more control, better leadership support, safer behaviour conditions and adequate planning time.

A practical framework for choosing a retention package

1. Diagnose the local exit pattern

Use exit records and confidential staff surveys to separate profession leavers from school movers. Ask which tasks consume excessive time, whether planning time is reliably protected, how behaviour incidents are supported and whether pay is viewed as fair. Compare results by subject, phase, contract, career stage and school site rather than relying on an average.

2. Fix high-impact tasks before adding a broad promise

Start with the tasks that teachers identify as excessive and that align with the NFER signals: lesson planning, behaviour, pastoral support and pupil data. Map who performs each task, how often it is repeated and which approvals add no value. A narrower change that teachers can feel may be more credible than an across-the-board “workload reduction” target.

3. Check leadership and support conditions

The wider review places school organization and leadership at the centre of how other conditions connect. Managers can protect planning time, respond consistently to behaviour, remove duplicate reporting and explain pay decisions. Measure whether teachers experience that support, not merely whether a policy document exists.

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4. Use pay deliberately

Model the recurring cost of a salary change and identify the group it is meant to reach. If the problem is pay dissatisfaction, communicate how the change addresses it; if the problem is a particular school’s staffing market, test whether the intervention reaches that school and subject. Do not present a one-off bonus as a complete retention strategy.

5. Pilot and evaluate

Where feasible, introduce changes in stages or compare otherwise similar teams. Track profession exits, school moves, absence, vacancies and teacher-reported workload control. Record implementation: protected planning periods may exist on paper but be lost to cover. Because the available estimates are observational, a well-designed local evaluation is more informative than applying their numbers as forecasts.

Common policy mistakes

  • Declaring a winner: the evidence does not support a universal ranking of pay, class size and planning time.
  • Treating correlation as causation: the NFER percentages are modelled associations and may be confounded.
  • Counting hours only: a one-hour reduction had a 0.003-percentage-point estimated association that NFER deemed meaningless.
  • Using “admin” as one category: behaviour, pastoral and pupil-data burdens showed clearer signals than general administration.
  • Confusing a preference with an outcome: the 2021 choice study measured stated choices, not observed retention.
  • Ignoring context: effects may differ by career stage, subject, phase, local labour market and school leadership.
  • Assuming a smaller class retains staff: no direct retention estimate was established.

What should leaders measure next?

A useful dashboard combines outcomes, conditions and implementation:

  • annual rates of leaving teaching and moving schools, reported separately;
  • retention by career stage, subject, phase and school challenge;
  • teacher ratings of pay satisfaction and control over work;
  • scheduled versus cancelled planning time;
  • time spent on lesson planning, behaviour, pastoral support, pupil data, marking and administration;
  • access to curriculum materials and the amount of planning rework;
  • ratings of leadership, manager support and behaviour conditions;
  • cost per retained teacher for recurring pay changes and non-financial interventions.

The available evidence does not provide a common cost-effectiveness ranking. Pay has a clearer direct budget cost, while many organizational changes may cost less financially but require sustained management capacity. Measuring both expenditure and teacher experience prevents a low-cost policy from being mistaken for an effective one.

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