Terri Bourke Archives

Retention: How to keep teachers

It’s no secret that Australia is in the grip of a teacher workforce crisis. The federal government review has revealed a shortfall of over 4,000 teachers, while reports and media headlines continue to highlight “critical teacher shortages”, “fears students will suffer as burnout contributes to ‘unprecedented’ teacher shortage” and other alarming trends. Amid this national narrative of crisis, one question is rarely asked: What about the schools that are managing to retain their teachers? What can we learn from them? What succeeds in teacher retention?

Rewriting the Narrative

Much of the current research and policy debate has rightly focused on why teachers are leaving the profession. The Australian Education Union’s 2024 State of Our Schools survey highlights chronic underfunding, excessive workloads, administrative overload, declining wellbeing, occupational violence, and limited career progression as key factors driving teachers out of the classroom.

But understanding what’s driving teachers away is only half the story. The other half, arguably the more actionable part, lies in what enables teachers to stay.

We thus need to balance the debate by asking not only ‘Why are some teachers leaving?’ but also ‘How are some schools managing to keep their teachers, despite all the odds?’

This shift in perspective opens the door to learning from the ‘success stories’.

Learning from the Schools Getting Teacher Retention Right

There is a plethora of research on why teachers leave. And yes – workload, burnout, inadequate support, limited career pathways and housing stress all play major roles. It’s vital that we continue to examine these factors.

But when the national conversation remains stuck on what’s going wrong, we risk missing the bigger picture: learning from some schools that are getting it right.

Across Australia, in the very places hardest hit by staffing shortages, remote towns, outer suburbs, low socio-economic communities, some schools are quietly bucking the trend. They’re not just holding onto teachers; they’re building stable, collaborative staff cultures where teachers stay and thrive.

These schools are not unicorns. They are real and they exist in the same policy and funding environments as those struggling with attrition. What sets them apart are the ways they’ve created spaces and structures that help their teachers stay the course.

Yet, these stories rarely make the headlines.

Where Community Keeps Teachers

Some schools are keeping their teachers not through flashy incentives, but by building strong local connections. Our recent research found that in hard-to-staff schools, what makes the difference is context, knowing the community, responding to students’ real lives, and creating a culture of care.

In one rural Victorian school, one principal talked about success coming from “translating” teaching to fit students’ needs and building trust with families, many of whom had negative experiences with school themselves.

Another principal in outer Melbourne talked about the power of “boots on the ground” leadership, being present, responsive, and deeply embedded in the school community.

These schools don’t rely on top-down rules. They focus on relationships, inclusion, and flexibility. And it’s working. They’re holding onto their new teachers because those teachers feel connected, supported, and valued in their school communities.

In our Queensland case studies, what stood out was the basics done well. When schools offered practical support such as affordable housing and child care, paired with strong, empathetic leadership and a culture that trusted teachers to use their professional judgement, something powerful happened. Teachers stayed.

Teachers told us they had the autonomy to do what they came into the job to do: make a real difference in the lives of kids. It’s about creating the conditions where teaching feels possible, purposeful, and sustainable.

Ditch the Deficit Talk

For too long, discussions about hard-to-staff schools are being dominated by a deficit narrative. We hear that “no one wants to teach there”. Or that “students are too difficult”, or that “nothing can be done unless the entire system changes”. These narratives paint an unfair picture of the students and communities. And they also risk devaluing the incredible work being done by teachers and leaders who are making a difference in these schools and their communities.

Focusing only on what’s broken can be deeply demoralising for those working in the system. It can lead to policy solutions that treat schools as sites of failure, rather than places of potential.

A more productive approach is to ask: where is retention working, and why?

By highlighting success stories, schools that have achieved relative workforce stability even in high-turnover contexts, we can identify practical, replicable strategies. We can also challenge the myth that teacher attrition is inevitable in certain places.

Let’s Celebrate What’s Working

It’s time we give credit where it’s due. There are principals across Australia who have created supportive, empowering work environments despite resource constraints. And there are teachers who stay, not out of obligation, but because they feel connected, respected, and supported in their professional growth. There are communities that rally around their local schools to ensure teachers feel welcomed and valued.

These efforts deserve recognition, not just as heartwarming exceptions, but as serious sources of insight.

Learning from what’s working allows us to shift from damage control to positive change. It equips other schools, policymakers, and education departments with ideas grounded in real-world experience. Most importantly, it gives the teaching profession, and the students who depend on it, something increasingly rare: hope.

To be clear, naming and addressing the problems driving teachers out of the profession is still essential. But we can’t afford to dwell solely on the negative. A deficit-only narrative will not lead to change. What we need now is a dual approach, one that recognises what’s wrong, and builds on what’s strong.

Let’s start recognising the schools that are holding on to their staff. And let’s amplify the voices of teachers who choose to stay. Let’s look beyond the crisis headlines and ask: what can we learn from the schools that have found ways to build a stable teaching workforce?

Amid the crisis talk, there are quiet successes all around us. We just need to start listening.

Bios

Babak Dadvand is a senior lecturer in pedagogy, professional practice and teacher education at La Trobe University, Australia. His research focuses on issues of equity and social justice in education, with a particular emphasis on preparing and supporting teachers to work in underserved and hard-to-staff school settings.

Steve Murphy is a senior lecturer at La Trobe University and is informed by his experience as a teacher and educational leader in rural primary and secondary schools. His research focuses on teaching and school leadership practices. He is particularly interested in practices contributing to students’ engagement and achievement in STEM education.

Terri Bourke is dean/head of school and professor at Queensland University of Technology and researches professional standards, professionalism, accreditation processes and diversity in education.

Reece Mills is an associate professor of education. He commenced his career in education as a secondary school science teacher before being appointed at QUT. Reece’s research aims to create ecologically and socially sustainable futures through education.

Scott Eacott is professor of education at UNSW Sydney. His current research looks at the systemic implications of housing and transport affordability for the teaching workforce.

Juliana Ryan is a senior lecturer in Teacher Education and Ethics in the School of Education at La Trobe University. Her deliberately diverse career has been shaped by a belief in the importance of social equity in and through education. Juliana has taught in community, carceral, vocational and university settings.

This is mistaken and disrespectful – a wasted opportunity

Teacher educators have been driving improvement in initial teacher education for decades. That’s been clear from as early as 1998 when the Australian Council of Deans of Education released “Preparing a Profession: Report of the National Standards and Guidelines for Initial Teacher Education Project”. The report outlined the first program standards for ITE and, as a professional group, teacher educators have initiated, co-designed and willingly responded to reforms ever since. But one of the things which is striking about the Teacher Education Expert Panel (TEEP) report – and several other reports of this nature – is that a very narrow selection of evidence is relied upon while much of the rigorous evidence, thoughtful scholarship and good practice within teacher education have been ignored. The very people who have conducted research in the area and who know the field and the broader context have been excluded. More importantly, much of the rigorous evidence, thoughtful scholarship and good practice within teacher education have been ignored. The assumption that teacher educators are not motivated to continuously improve their programs without punitive measures or financial incentives is mistaken, disrespectful and represents a wasted opportunity to work more constructively with the sector.

These are some of the key reasons the Australian Teacher Education Association (ATEA) and the Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE), held a joint forum focused on responding to the TEEP report, Strong Beginnings, which has recommendations across four domains: strengthening ITE programs to deliver confident effective beginning teachers; strengthening the link between performance and funding of ITE programs; improving the quality of practical experiences in teaching; and improving access to postgraduate ITE for mid-career entrants.

And on Tuesday evening, nearly 200 teacher educators across Australian states and territories, and internationally in England and Lebanon, came together to listen to a panel of five invited distinguished academics: Jenny Gore, Deb Hayes, Viv Ellis, Donna Pendergast who had publicly commented on the TEEP report. The fifth panellist, Michelle Simons, was a member of the Teacher Education Expert Panel and provided insight into the development of the report.

TEEP was described variously by panellists as ‘a turning point’, ‘a missed opportunity’, ‘a rupture in the discourse of initial teacher education’ and’ disappointing’. And we, as teacher educators, had been tipped off before the release of the report – media coverage involving some panel members anticipated, even at the release of the discussion paper, that education academics would not like the results of the review. This belief was based upon a notion that teacher educators have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo and are somehow resistant to change. Yet most education academics’ ‘vested interest’ is in providing the very best initial teacher education, much like surgeons have a ‘vested interest’ in survival rates of patients and engineers have a ‘vested interest’ in building bridges that don’t fall down.

Donna Pendergast advised we must not consider TEEP in isolation. It comes alongside a range of other reviews affecting the higher education sector, such as the Universities Accord Interim Report and the forthcoming review for the Better and Fairer Education System. They all talk about the importance of teachers and teachers’ work and the role of initial teacher education. These reports will inevitably interact. And, Pendergast continued, it’s important not to forget we are still in the Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group (TEMAG) cycle of reform. There has been zero evidence to date about the effectiveness of that particular review and now we find ourselves in the middle of a new one. This is a missed opportunity.

“Most of the initiatives, recommendations and ideas that we saw in the TEEP report were not directed at transforming our system, but in fact, at the crisis around teacher shortages, and so ITE has become the vehicle for trying to diffuse and redirect the political space.” Donna Pendergast

A further theme raised across the panellists was that specifying core content, government over-prescription of any kind, has not been justified and will result in cookie cutter education programs which are the antithesis of what we need to attract and prepare a diverse teacher workforce.

New research from Viv Ellis’s team at Monash shows, resoundingly, that teachers felt their ITE had prepared them well for the classroom. That trope, that teachers don’t think teacher education is any good, is one of five prevailing myths he spoke about. The others are that universities don’t do as they are told; phonics is only taught at one university; university degrees are highly influenced by liberal arts and sociology; and that England should be a role model for Australia. But a country which has falling life expectancy, inconsistent and even poor health care, endless economic damage caused by Brexit; in his view, that is hardly a model Australia should follow.

The TEEP represents an odd juncture for initial teacher education. Despite the election of a new, now Labor, government, in some ways TEEP represents a link to the previous Coalition government, particularly the review of quality teacher education led by former Education Minister Alan Tudge. It appears that new education minister Jason Clare, wants to implement and carry forward the recommendations of the former government: strengthening initial teacher education and the linking of performance indicators of ITE to funding, strangely, as a solution to the problems of teacher shortages and teacher attrition. The minister also wants to review professional experience (and the AARE blog will have more on that tomorrow) and to explore the chronic teacher shortage.

What TEEP represents really is a significant turning point in the conversation around teacher education. Those myths noted by Ellis dominate the discourse – and now there’s the equally pernicious claim that current ITE is not informed by evidence, a claim that is not borne out by the robust bodies of evidence that currently inform the ITE curriculum.

Despite the challenges posed by TEEP, the closing commentary from the audience referred to the development of a sense of shared purpose and a desire to be united in terms of what happens next. While acknowledging significant concerns about the TEEP report and its outward-facing representations of teacher education, there were nevertheless some ‘cracks of light’ continue to shine through. There is now an opportunity to work collaboratively and collectively to respond to this latest review.

Yet as teacher educators and educational researchers, we also need to remain vigilant and stand up and be heard, and call out the ‘turning point’ moment that this report represents. One challenge is to ensure alternative visions for education and ITE are heard; what we need more of is research-informed discussions about the kinds of teachers we need, and how best to prepare them for the changing world.

From left to right: Ange Fitzgerald is professor and associate dean (education) in the School of Education at RMIT University. Terri Bourke is president of the Australian Teacher Education Association (ATEA) and Academic Lead Research in the School of Teacher Education and Leadership at QUT. Julie McLeod is President of the Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) and Professor of Curriculum, Equity and Social Change at the University of Melbourne Graduate School of Education.