Teacher retention crisis deepens as report calls for urgent overhaul of school culture and wellbeing 

The UK’s only education wellbeing charity, Education Support, has warned that teacher attrition in England is reaching unsustainable levels, calling for a national strategy to tackle what it describes as “a systemic crisis” in workforce retention. 

In its new report, Revisiting the Teacher Retention Crisis: Recommendations for Change (Autumn 2025), the charity highlights that one in eleven qualified teachers left the state school system in 2023–24, and the number of staff exiting the profession rose by 44 per cent between 2021–22 and 2022–23. 

The report argues that this level of turnover is not just a workforce issue but a direct threat to educational quality and equity, particularly in disadvantaged communities, where disruption caused by staff churn disproportionately affects pupil outcomes. 

According to Education Support’s analysis, 80 per cent of teachers and leaders experience stress at work, while 70 per cent say their job negatively affects their mental health. More than half believe their school’s culture harms wellbeing. 

Work-related stress, depression or anxiety now account for 53 per cent of all ill health in the education sector, costing an estimated £1.8 billion annually in lost productivity and sickness absence. 

The report describes the issue as “primarily a workplace wellbeing problem”, urging policymakers to recognise that retention depends on improving culture, workload and leadership rather than solely recruitment drives. 

Education Support is calling for the Department for Education to publish a new, evidence-based retention strategy, the first since 2019 – with clear targets alongside recruitment metrics. 

Its recommendations include: 

• Introducing a national teacher retention target, tracked alongside recruitment outcomes. 

• Reforming the 1,265-hour rule to address excessive workloads. 

• Embedding professional supervision and reflective practice for teachers and leaders. 

• Integrating wellbeing into accountability frameworks and leadership qualifications. 

• Investing in “people leadership” skills to help school leaders manage teams compassionately and effectively. 

The report also urges government to reform pay and conditions frameworks last updated in the 1970s, arguing that without modernisation “we cannot expect schools to do more with less”. 

Education Support estimates that the cost of training teachers who later leave exceeds £1 billion a year, with the total economic cost of attrition – including lost productivity and recruitment – topping £1.5 billion annually. 

The charity warns that the system’s current design “is not built to support long and satisfying careers”, leaving children and young people without the continuity and experience that stable teaching workforces bring. 

Alongside national reforms, the report sets out a framework for employers and school leaders, drawn from workplace-wellbeing research at the University of Oxford. It recommends that every school regularly review workload, model healthy work–life balance and strengthen staff voice and inclusion. 

“Good relationships built on trust, appreciation, support and belonging make schools more effective places to work,” the report notes. 

Education Support Chief Executive, Sinéad McBrearty, said the time for piecemeal action has passed: 

“England needs a coherent, long-term teacher retention strategy. This isn’t just about keeping people in teaching roles – it’s about enabling educators to reconnect with their passion and purpose.” 

The charity’s findings come amid rising concern across the education sector that unmanageable workload, accountability pressures and burnout are driving skilled teachers away faster than they can be replaced. 

Jonathan Williams – Mindwork Wellbeing and expert in teacher wellbeing commented:

There is a reason every parent is somewhat ‘bushed’ by the end of the summer holidays and talk wistfully about getting their kids back into the school routine… Growing children are hard work. With that in mind Teacher wellbeing should be the foundation of a well-designed and thriving education system. The single biggest difference we can make to keep good teachers in the profession, is to make teaching fulfilling and to be adequately paid. This starts with leadership. Leadership that prioritises wellbeing alongside outcomes. Workloads that allow teachers to do their jobs well without constant exhaustion and access to ongoing supervision or reflective practice rather than just token gesture wellbeing days at the end of long terms.

Practical change mean timetables that include protected time for planning and recovery, reducing unnecessary administrative pressure and embedding peer support and mentoring into the school culture without fear of an overbearing ‘quality control’ environment. Children need their teachers to be constantly ‘on’ there isn’t a time when you can yawn into a laptop and wander off to make a coffee when a zoom call has just finished. When anyone, but especially teachers, feel trusted, supported and able to keep growing, let alone valued…retention naturally follows!

With almost three-quarters of the workforce reporting poor wellbeing, the message from the report is clear: without urgent action to make teaching sustainable, the cost will be borne not only by educators, but by the next generation of pupils they serve.