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Outbyte PC Repair FREEClear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →Outbyte Driver Updater FREEFix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →There is no evidence-based universal winner. In the most detailed current England analysis, retention is more closely associated with how teachers experience particular workload tasks—especially lesson planning, behaviour, pastoral support and pupil data—than with total hours alone. Pay satisfaction also matters, but the estimated salary effect in a 2026 review of reviews is statistically significant and small. The sources reviewed establish no direct class-size effect on teacher retention.
That means a credible retention policy should protect useful planning time, remove avoidable task burden, improve behaviour and leadership support, and use competitive pay as part of a package. Treat smaller classes as an educational or staffing decision unless a local evaluation shows a retention benefit.
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What the strongest current evidence actually measures
The most specific evidence comes from 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 survey and administrative data for teachers in England. The retention sample contains 8,964 teachers, including 729 classified as leavers (8.1%). The main multivariate analysis is smaller because some records have missing data.
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Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Those estimates are cross-sectional correlations. They show that teachers with a particular experience were more or less likely to be classified as leavers; they do not prove that changing that experience would cause a specific change in retention. A teacher may report heavy workload because of weak leadership, difficult pupil behaviour, staffing shortages or a personal decision to leave, and those factors can interact.
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A 2026 systematic review of reviews by Kenneth Leithwood, Qing Gu and Sofia Eleftheriadou reaches a similar practical conclusion: retention factors usually operate inside the school organisation, and leadership influences how teachers experience them. The review also notes inconsistent definitions and methods across studies, limited direct testing of theory, insufficient attention to teachers’ personal goals and limited evidence about which leadership practices work best.
A 2021 England discrete-choice study commissioned for the Office for the Pay Review Bodies and Office of Manpower Economics compared the value teachers placed on pay, rewards and other job characteristics. It is useful for understanding stated preferences, but it measures hypothetical choices and predates the 2026 task-level analysis. None of these sources supplies a randomised, head-to-head trial of pay, class size and planning time.
Does higher teacher pay keep people in teaching?
What the estimates show
The 2026 review of reviews finds that higher salaries are associated with lower rates of leaving teaching and moving schools. Its pooled estimate says a salary increase slightly reduces the odds of turnover, but the point estimate is close to one: the effect is statistically detectable yet small. The NFER pathway analysis separately finds that greater pay satisfaction is associated with a lower leaving rate.
These findings justify keeping pay in a retention package, particularly where salaries lag behind alternative jobs or local living costs. They do not establish that a particular raise will retain a known number of teachers, nor that pay alone will compensate for unsafe behaviour, excessive planning demands or poor management.
Why pay dissatisfaction still matters
The NFER report says approximately 90% of teachers who left cited high workload as a reason and approximately 50–60% cited dissatisfaction with pay, drawing on Working Lives of Teachers and Leaders data. Those are reported reasons, not estimates of how many departures a pay rise would prevent. A school should therefore read pay and workload data together rather than treating one as a substitute for the other.
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Targeted bonuses are not a guaranteed fix
The 2026 review found no clear benefit from retention bonuses for keeping teachers in the profession or in hard-to-staff schools in the evidence it examined. A one-off payment can still help recruitment or acknowledge difficult work, but leaders should not present it as a proven retention solution without tracking whether recipients remain after the payment period and whether non-recipients leave.
Would smaller classes improve teacher retention?
The sources reviewed do not provide a direct estimate that reducing class size improves teacher retention. Smaller classes may affect pupil learning, classroom management, staffing requirements or teacher satisfaction, but those possible pathways are not a measured retention effect in this evidence set.
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Class-size reductions also require additional teachers, rooms and timetabling capacity. If a school cannot staff the extra classes, the policy could increase vacancies or workload for remaining staff. For that reason, use class size as a decision about educational provision and staffing conditions. If retention is the objective, specify the mechanism—such as fewer behaviour incidents or less marking—and evaluate whether that mechanism and subsequent retention actually change.
Would more planning time help teachers stay?
The relationship is not “more is always better”
NFER’s 2026 analysis finds a significant association at both ends: teachers reporting too much time on lesson planning had a higher leaving rate, and teachers reporting too little planning time also had a higher leaving rate. The practical goal is therefore adequate, useful planning time, not the maximum possible number of hours or a blanket reduction.
“Too much” can indicate duplicated plans, compliance paperwork, adapting materials for several classes or reworking lessons after late timetable changes. “Too little” can mean preparation is pushed into evenings, teachers rely on rushed materials or inexperienced staff cannot get subject guidance. A protected block is valuable only if teachers can use it for the work that improves their lessons.
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Which tasks have the clearest associations with leaving?
In the NFER model, a 10-percentage-point increase in teachers reporting too much time on a task was associated with these changes in the leaving rate:
| Task | 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 | Modelled association; not a causal effect |
| Pastoral support | 0.049 percentage points higher | Modelled association; not a causal effect |
| Pupil data | 0.020 percentage points higher | Modelled association; not a causal effect |
| Marking | Very small estimated association | Smaller signal in this model |
| General administration | No estimated total retention effect | Does not prove administration is harmless; it was not associated with a total effect in this model |
The figures are associations for England teachers in the NFER analysis. They should not be converted into promises such as “cutting planning by one hour saves a teacher.” They do indicate where a workload audit is more likely to find a retention-relevant problem than a generic instruction to cut paperwork.
What a useful planning-time policy looks like
- Schedule protected planning blocks during the working week and publish them in the timetable.
- Ask teachers which tasks consume the block, then remove duplicate formats, unnecessary data entries and repeated lesson-plan submissions.
- Provide a common, high-quality curriculum starting point where appropriate. NFER identifies access to high-quality curriculum materials as an enabler cited in earlier workload work, but this report does not prove that buying any particular planning product improves retention.
- Give early-career and non-specialist teachers subject-specific coaching so planning time is not spent searching for basic content.
- Review whether planning time is being displaced by cover, meetings, behaviour incidents or pastoral crises.
Why cutting total hours alone is unlikely to solve retention
NFER estimates that reducing total weekly working time by one hour is associated with a 0.003-percentage-point reduction in the leaving rate. The report describes that estimate as meaningless. This does not mean hours are irrelevant: sustained excessive hours can damage health and signal poor organisation. It means an hours target by itself is too blunt to identify the work that drives a teacher’s decision to leave.
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.” A policy that removes one meeting but leaves teachers unable to control lesson planning, behaviour or data deadlines may produce little retention benefit.
How the three options compare
| Change | Retention evidence | What it can realistically address | Main caution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Higher base pay | Lower turnover is associated with higher salary and pay satisfaction; estimated effect is small | Financial dissatisfaction and competition with other jobs | Recurring cost; no guaranteed gain for a specific raise |
| Retention bonus | No clear benefit found for staying in teaching or in hard-to-staff schools in the reviewed evidence | Short-term recognition or recruitment signal | One-off payment may not change underlying conditions |
| More planning time | Both too little and too much reported planning time are associated with higher leaving | Control over preparation and reduction of high-burden planning tasks | Requires useful work design, not simply more calendar hours |
| Reducing behaviour, pastoral and pupil-data burden | Higher reported time on each is associated with higher leaving | Specific non-teaching tasks linked to departure risk | Associations may reflect wider school problems |
| Smaller classes | No direct retention estimate established in the reviewed sources | Potential educational or classroom-management aims | Additional staffing and space; retention benefit unproven |
The available evidence does not provide a common cost-effectiveness ranking. Pay has a clear recurring budget cost. Planning, behaviour and data changes may require timetable redesign, training, cover or additional pastoral capacity. Smaller classes generally require more staffing and space. Compare proposals using both expected mechanism and full implementation cost, then test the result locally.
A practical retention strategy for a school or system
1. Separate the retention problem you are trying to solve
Track leaving the profession separately from moving to another school. A policy that stops transfers but does not stop exits from teaching has a different result from one that improves both. Break results down by career stage, subject, phase, school context and contract type so an average does not hide a hard-to-staff group.
2. Diagnose tasks, not just hours
Use a short, repeated workload survey asking whether teachers have too little, adequate or too much time for lesson planning, behaviour, pastoral support, pupil data, marking and administration. Pair those answers with timetable data, cover records, behaviour referrals and deadline calendars. The aim is to find controllable sources of burden, not to create another reporting exercise.
3. Protect planning and improve its quality
Reserve planning time in the timetable, eliminate duplicate documentation and set a clear standard for what a finished plan looks like. Check termly whether teachers can actually use the protected period. If planning time is routinely lost to cover or meetings, record the displacement and fix the scheduling cause.
4. Strengthen behaviour and pastoral support
The task-level associations make behaviour and pastoral work retention priorities alongside planning. Define who responds to serious incidents, provide rapid escalation routes and ensure pastoral responsibilities do not silently expand. Give leaders and line managers responsibility for resolving repeated overload rather than asking individual teachers to absorb it.
5. Use pay where it addresses a real gap
Review pay satisfaction by experience, subject and location. A broad salary adjustment may be more transparent than a short-term bonus, but affordability and collective agreements matter. If a targeted payment is used, state its duration and eligibility, and evaluate retention after the payment rather than counting acceptance as success.
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6. Treat class size as a separately evaluated lever
Reduce class size only when the educational or staffing case supports the required teachers, rooms and timetable. Define a retention hypothesis—for example, fewer severe behaviour incidents—and measure that intermediate outcome before claiming a retention effect.
How to tell whether a change is working
Set a baseline before implementation and review at fixed intervals. Useful measures include:
- 12-month and 24-month rates of leaving teaching, moving schools and remaining in the same school.
- Retention by early-career status, subject, phase, school disadvantage and full- or part-time status.
- Teachers’ reports of too little, adequate or too much time on planning, behaviour, pastoral support, pupil data, marking and administration.
- Pay satisfaction and perceived control over work.
- Lost planning periods, cover assignments, behaviour escalations and time spent on repeated data submissions.
- Vacancies, sickness absence and use of temporary staff, which can reveal whether a workload intervention is shifting pressure elsewhere.
Where possible, compare participating schools with similar schools that have not yet changed policy, or introduce the change in stages. Report uncertainty and distinguish a change in survey responses from a change in actual retention. Because the NFER estimates are observational, a local before-and-after result should still be interpreted cautiously.
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Common policy mistakes
- Declaring a winner from one statistic: the salary association is small, planning effects are task-specific and class-size retention evidence is absent.
- Counting hours instead of control: an hour removed from the timetable does not help if the remaining work becomes more fragmented or unpredictable.
- Using “admin” as a catch-all: the NFER model found no estimated total effect for general administration, while behaviour, pastoral support, pupil data and planning showed clearer associations.
- Confusing transfers with exits: moving schools and leaving teaching are different outcomes and require different responses.
- Assuming correlation is impact: workload may be a symptom of leadership, staffing or pupil-behaviour conditions, so changing one task may not change retention unless the surrounding problem is addressed.
- Buying a solution without an evaluation: access to quality curriculum materials may support planning, but no particular product is established as a retention intervention by these findings.
What decision-makers should conclude
Start with the work teachers say is excessive and least controllable. Protect adequate planning time, reduce avoidable planning, behaviour, pastoral and pupil-data burden, and improve the leadership support that connects those conditions. Maintain competitive pay and monitor pay satisfaction, but budget for a modest, uncertain retention effect rather than a guaranteed return. Do not claim that smaller classes improve retention until a direct evaluation demonstrates it in the setting where the policy is being considered.
This approach follows the central finding of the 2026 review: retention policies are more likely to succeed when they recognise that factors interact and that school organisation and leadership shape how teachers experience them.
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