Continuing teachers in the teacher workforce
Teachers have specific areas of specialisation, particularly in secondary education. One of the critical considerations in the analysis of supply is the subject specialisation landscape of the current workforce, relative to the subjects that they
are required to teach. This is critically important for identifying and prioritising specialisations not currently meeting student demand.
Teaching out-of-field
Teaching out-of-field remains a critical and prevalent issue in schools across Australia. While out-of-field teaching may be seen as a temporary fix for teacher shortages in particular subject
areas, it can have long-term implications for student outcomes. Analysing the extent of out-of-field teaching in the workforce provides insight into subject areas that face teacher supply shortages and could guide targeted policy development, as well
as recruitment and retention initiatives to ensure a sustainable pipeline of qualified teachers in all subjects.
Out-of-field teaching
At its most strict definition, teachers are considered out-of-field if what they teach does not align with their ITE content and pedagogy studies, as set out under the Accreditation of initial teacher education programs in Australia: Standards
and Procedures (Standards and Procedures). However, the ATWD captures a slightly broader definition of out-of-field teaching. Given the data provided, teachers who had completed at least one semester of tertiary study in both content and pedagogy
in a subject that was taught were classified as potentially in-field.
When reporting on out-of-field teaching in Key Learning Areas (KLAs), a teacher wasclassified as out-of-field if they were not in-field for a subject in the KLA.
More nuanced reporting on out out-of-field teaching will become available with the release of the linked teacher workforce data for 2022.
Providing better data to measure workforce specialisation is an ongoing project for the ATWD. Given this, the ATWD data on out-of-field teaching is only one part of understanding secondary teachers’ specialisation. Trends currently cover the period from 2018 to 2022, and show a general reduction in the rates of out-of-field teaching over time across key learning areas.
In 2022, at least around one-in-five (19%) classroom teachers who taught subjects in each KLA were teaching out-of-field. The extent of out-of-field teaching varied across KLAs in 2022 with the rates for some subject areas higher than others (see Table 6). In 2022, teachers of technology were most likely to be teaching out-of-field (40%) and science teachers were least likely to be teaching out-of-field (19%).
Table 6: Out-of-field teaching across key learning areas, 2022
| Subject area | Out-of-field teaching rate (least likely to most likely) |
|---|
| Science | 19% |
| English | 24% |
| Performance Arts | 26% |
| Languages other than English | 29% |
| Humanities | 30% |
| Mathematics | 32% |
| Health/Physical Education | 34% |
| Arts | 34% |
| Technology | 40% |
One important caveat applies to the data on out-of-field teaching by KLA. A teacher in science may teach both chemistry and biology, and only be in-field for biology, but not chemistry. At the Key Learning Area level, science, languages other than
English, the humanities and technology may all have different rates of out-of-field teaching in their specific subjects.
Food for thought
Q. Which teaching specialisation has been over-supplied?
The ATWD data provides little evidence that there are too many teachers in any Key Learning Area. If too many teachers had been prepared in one area, then at least one Key Learning Area with a low rate of out-of-field teaching would be expected.
However, even though Key Learning Areas will tend to have lower rates of out-of-field teaching than individual subjects, none had an objectively low rate of out-of-field teaching. This pattern of data could be seen as an indicator of a
teacher shortage across the board, rather than the over-supply of any one type of teacher. Alternatively, in some locations there may be an over-supply of some specialisations. This is consistent with findings that a small proportion of
those who have left the workforce indicated that a barrier to returning was a lack of positions in their subject area (12%).
To enable examination of out-of-field teaching by subject, the data on the all registered teachers deployed in schools who teach secondary learners more broadly is used. There were more out-of-field teachers within mathematics than there were in science related subjects.
Table 7: Out-of-field teaching across STEM subjects, 2022
| STEM subject | Out-of-field teaching rate (least likely to most likely) |
|---|
| Biology | 22% |
| Chemistry | 25% |
| Physics | 29% |
| Mathematics | 32% |
Food for thought
Q. Is there a greater shortage of chemistry and physics teachers than biology teachers?
The ATWD data suggests a similar proportion of teachers are teaching each of the three main sciences out-of-field. However, this might not mean that out-of-field teaching is equal. The ATWD does not currently have data on how much of a teacher’s
load is spent teaching each subject, and as a result, it is not yet known whether the amount of student learning taught by an out-of-field teacher is equal across STEM subjects.
Career trajectories
As explored in the section on School Leadership, many senior school leaders are currently approaching retirement age, and these positions will need to be filled by others in the teacher workforce,
most likely by middle leaders, and in turn, classroom teachers will move into middle leader positions. As the teacher workforce progresses, through leadership, their
face-to-face teaching reduces. Understanding the ongoing contribution of continuing teachers requires an understanding of the likelihood of not only school leadership outflows due to retirement,
but the follow-on reduction in the teaching hours of continuing teachers promoted into these positions.
Shifts in the composition of the casual and relief teacher workforce
CRTs have played an important role in the teacher workforce, by covering vacancies or absences of permanent or fixed-term contract teaching staff. As outlined in the Teacher Workforce section, the proportion of the workforce who are CRTs has increased, with a 9 percent increase from 2019 (10%) to 2020 (19%), followed by a drop of 3 percentage points to 2022 (16%). Additionally, three important changes within this group have played out against the backdrop of COVID-19 and related challenges.
Previous ATWD analysis (AITSL 2021) has identified that early career teachers, especially those in the first 3 years of teaching, are more likely to be CRTs than the teaching workforce (early career, 1-3 years: 17%; teaching workforce: 10%). The main
reason for these early career teachers taking on casual employment was because they were unable to secure a fixed-term contract or permanent position (early career, 1-3 years: 59%; all CRTs: 35%).
A second group of CRTs are those who are older and more experienced. This group may be undertaking casual and relief teaching in the lead up to retirement. Teachers with 30 or more years of experience are at least 50 years old or older, and the proportion of CRTs in this older and more experienced group increased to just under two in five over the COVID period (2019: 30%; 2020: 30%; 2021: 38%). The proportion of early career teachers, in their first few years of teaching, engaged in CRT roles fell by the same amount over this period (2019: 31%; 2020: 27%; 2021: 23%).
This trend did not continue through to 2022. The proportion of CRTs with 30 plus years of experience declined 2 percentage points (2022: 36%), while the proportion of early career teachers remained stable (2022: 23%).
It is critical to better understand the casual pool, including its composition regarding the future capacity of CRT teachers to provide support to the permanent workforce, and its potential contribution as a supply channel into the permanent workforce.
The changing contracted and working hours of casual and relief teachers
Although the changes to the years of experience among those in casual and relief roles did not persist beyond COVID, changes to the nature of CRT work have persisted.
In 2020, just 10% of CRTs worked the equivalent of full-time hours. In 2021 the percentage of casual and relief teachers working the equivalent of full-time hours increased by 24 percentage points (2020: 10%; 2021: 34%), followed by a slight drop of 4 percentage points into 2022 (30%). These changes coincide with increased efforts to establish pools of CRTs by employers, in the context of increased absences due to COVID-19 and growing awareness of teacher shortages.
Outflows
The size of the available teacher workforce is determined by both inflows (through ITE, migration and other pathways) and outflows, and the success of retention strategies. For example, some individuals will leave a profession due to retirement, and
this can be forecast by analysing the age distribution. Others will leave prior to retirement, and this is where understanding career intentions and actual patterns of retention becomes critical.
Intentions to leave the profession
Understanding the intentions of the teacher workforce to stay in the profession until retirement provides important insights into their perceptions of the long-term sustainability of their own personal teaching career. Analysis of their reasons for
why they intend to leave also highlights factors which could be addressed to increase retention.
In 2020, intentions to leave the profession prior to retirement decreased to the lowest recorded level (22%), however in 2022 intentions to leave increased to their highest recorded level in the ATWD (34%).
The COVID-19 pandemic brought unprecedented challenges and disruptions to the teacher workforce. Amidst these changes, intentions to leave the profession prior to retirement dropped (2019: 27%; 2020: 22%), possibly due to the uncertainties arising from the pandemic. However, the intentions of teachers to leave the profession have increased across the workforce since 2020, with more intending to leave prior to retirement in 2022 (34%). This highlights that career intentions are subject to pressures within the teacher workforce, but also need to be considered in the context of macro-economic and broader societal events.
Career intentions are generally consistent across groups, however, there are some small differences in line with seniority. Those in senior school leadership positions have consistently been less likely to intend to leave the profession before retirement (see Table 8). This may partly reflect job security and pay. When those who intend to remain in the profession until retirement were asked why, school leaders, and especially more senior leaders, were more likely to indicate that being well paid was a reason they stayed (senior leaders: 19%, middle leaders: 16%; classroom teachers: 15% in 2022).
Table 8: Proportion intending to leave before retirement over time by workforce segments
| Workforce segment | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 |
|---|
| Teacher workforce | 27% | 22% | 25% | 34% |
| Classroom teachers | 29% | 24% | 28% | 36% |
| Middle leaders | 26% | 21% | 23% | 33% |
| Senior leaders | 21% | 17% | 19% | 25% |
| Casual/relief teachers | 23% | 18% | 19% | 25% |
| Regional/remote teacher workforce | 28% | 25% | 26% | 35% |
| Metropolitan teacher workforce | 28% | 22% | 26% | 36% |
| Migrant teachers | NR | 18% | 19% | 28% |
| Teachers with Australian ITE | 27% | 23% | 26% | 35%/td>
|
A person having one career, for their whole working life, is increasingly rare (ABS 2022). The younger a teacher is, the more likely they are to have more than one career following teaching. There is also a larger number of years that people have
to assess their intentions over.
In 2020, younger teachers were more likely to be uncertain whether they intended to remain in the profession until retirement or not (see Figure 12). The proportions that were unsure as to whether they would leave before retirement, or remain, were:
- 48% of 25 year olds
- 39% of 30 year olds
- 37% of 40 year olds
- 37% of 50 year olds
- 29% of 60 year olds
- 22% of 65 year olds
Figure 12: Proportion of teacher workforce uncertain of their career intentions, by ageNote. Trend-line is a cubic line of best fit
Unlike reporting of tabular data on career intentions in the ATWD Key Metrics dashboard, analyses of career intentions by age do not use harmonized and adjusted intentions data. There is no correction of intentions when a person indicates
that they plan to leave the profession before retirement, but their age and years intending to remain brings them over retirement age, or if retirement was provided as a reason for leaving the profession.
When do people plan to leave
The three broad categories of career intentions, ‘leave before retirement’, ‘remain until retirement’, and ‘unsure’ are best understood by expanding the ‘leave before retirement’ category based on the
information about how long teachers intend to remain before leaving into more detailed categories (see Table 9).
Increases in intentions to leave the profession before retirement have largely been for those who intend to leave in the short term, immediately, and in the medium term rather than in an uncertain period of time.
From 2018 to 2021, the least common intention category was those intending to leave immediately (in one year or less) (range: 1.9-4.3%). This group grew by 59%, from 2.7% in 2021 to 4.3% in 2022. The number of teachers intending to leave after a short length of time (2-4 years) (68% growth), a medium amount of time (5-9 years) (42% growth) and an uncertain amount of time (16% growth) also grew from 2021 to 2022.
There were large increases in the proportion of the teacher workforce intending to leave within 10 years from 2020 to 2022, such that the levels reached in 2022 were above pre-pandemic levels (2019: 16%, 2022: 21%).
Besides the 9 percentage point increase in the total number of teachers intending to leave the profession before retirement, it is notable that every subgroup of those intending to leave increased from 2021 to 2022. This is seen most in those who are wishing to leave the profession in a short term (2021: 4.40%, 2022: 7.40%) and medium term (2021: 6.40%, 2022: 9.10%). A similar pattern can be seen over the period from 2020 to 2021, with the exception of a drop in those intending to remain for at least 10 years but still leave before retirement (2021: 39.7%, 2022: 30.20%).
Table 9: Proportion of teacher workforce career intentions, by year
| Broad intention | Proximity of departure | Detailed information | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 |
|---|
| Leave | Uncertain | Leave before retirement, not sure when | 6.0% | 6.3% | 6.1% | 7.0% | 8.1% |
| Leave | Immediate | Leave in 1 year or less | 2.5% | 2.5% | 1.9% | 2.7% | 4.3% |
| Leave | Short-term | Leave in 2-4 years | 4.3% | 4.8% | 3.3% | 4.4% | 7.4% |
| Leave | Medium-term | Leave in 5-9 years | 7.7% | 8.4% | 5.3% | 6.4% | 9.1% |
| Leave | Long-term | Remain for at least 10 years, leave before retirement | 6.2% | 5.3% | 5.6% | 4.5% | 5.2% |
| Remain | Remain | Remain until retirement | 37.3% | 38.3% | 42.1% | 39.7% | 30.2% |
| Unsure | Unsure | Unsure of career intentions | 35.9% | 34.3% | 35.7% | 35.2% | 35.7% |
Uncertainty of career intentions
After age 30, the intentions of teachers to leave the profession before retirement get lower as they approach retirement age
For those with clear career intentions, an analysis of
intentions by age indicated that the likelihood of intending to leave the profession peaks at age 29, at 3.9 times more likely to indicate leave before retirement than stay until retirement (see Figure 13). Notably, 25 to 29 year
olds are most uncertain about their career intentions. The likelihood of intending to leave remains higher than intending to stay until somewhere between ages 53 and 55. At age 66, the teacher workforce is 3.7 times more likely to stay in
the profession until retirement. In some ways this is not surprising, as younger teachers intending to stay until retirement are committing for a longer period of time.
Figure 13: Likelihood of leaving relative to staying, by age of teacher Note. For the Leave/stay (ratio), a score of 2 means two times more likely, and a score of 0.5 means two times less likely.
Unlike reporting of tabular data on career intentions in the ATWD Key Metrics dashboard, analyses of career intentions by age do not use harmonized and adjusted intentions data. There is no correction of intentions when a person indicates
that they plan to leave the profession before retirement, but their age and years intending to remain brings them over retirement age, or if retirement was provided as a reason for leaving the profession.
Food for thought
Q. Why are casual/relief teachers more likely to plan to stay until retirement than classroom teachers?
The relationship of age to career intentions may account for some of the differences in career intentions across groups. Casual /relief teachers are relatively older than classroom teachers. In 2020, 34% were over 60 years of age, compared
to just 14% of classroom teachers. Older teachers are more likely to intend to remain in the profession until retirement. In fact, for each year over 60 years of age, the workforce is at least twice as likely to indicate that they
will stay in the profession until retirement than they are to plan to leave before retirement. However, there are other factors which are also likely to be at play, such as a lower unpaid workload.
One of the challenges for understanding the teacher workforce is understanding when a difference between workforce segments or teachers in different roles and positions is likely to be related to their experiences of work, whereas other
times they may be due to differences in the characteristics of the workforce in these segments, roles or positions.
Attrition
The ATWD captures attrition in a number of ways. These include examining the number of ITE graduates from each cohort who remain registered at future points in time, the
proportion of registered teachers who are not registered in any state or territory the following
year, data collected from non-deployed respondents to the ATWD Teacher Survey on when they left the profession, and examining those with survey responses in multiple years who move
from the teacher workforce to non-deployed
Using this data, attrition has been analysed through examining the proportion of each cohort of Australian-trained domestic ITE graduates that remained registered in 2020. The ATWD does not capture similar data for overseas-trained ITE graduates.
For each since ITE graduation, the proportion of the cohort who has discontinued registration increases by 1.3 percentage points.
Analysis in the ATWD Key Metrics Dashboard has found that 5.25% of individuals who graduated ITE in 2019 did not hold full or provisional registration in 2020. With each subsequent year in the
profession, the percentage of ITE graduates who remained
registered declined by an average of 1.28
percentage points per year (see Figure 14). This data is based on pre-Covid experiences and post-Covid retention may look different. If this trend holds for future years of registration with the same cohorts, and holds with earlier ITE cohorts,
it indicates that a small number of teachers exit the profession each year.
Figure 14: Proportion of ITE graduates registered in 2020, by year of graduationFor the ITE cohort who would have been at the end of their five-year early-career period in 2020 (2015 graduates), 91% remained registered. Although the workforce pathways of 2015 graduates over time are not known, the cross-sections of these
graduating cohorts, taken together, suggest 5% do not enter the workforce. Of those who entered the profession, 96% were still registered.
Actual rates of attrition may be higher than the rates of discontinuation of registration. Teachers may opt to maintain their registration, despite no longer working in schools or early
childhood services. However, for early career teachers this choice to maintain registration while no longer working appears unlikely, as they appear to maintain registration for a shorter period than others in the non-deployed teacher pool for 2022.
Intentions to leave the profession within 1 year are generally aligned with annual registration discontinuation rates
The percentage of the teacher workforce that intended to leave the profession in one year or less in 2019, and therefore would not be expected to part of the 2020 teacher workforce if their intentions were accurate, was 2.5%. These and other
attrition intentions were somewhat higher than the average rate of registration discontinuation up to 2020, at 1.28 percentage points.
This relatively small difference suggests intentions to leave and registration discontinuation are broadly comparable. As teachers may maintain their registration for a variety of reasons after having otherwise left the workforce, including
carer responsibilities and during career changes, the rate of registration discontinuation is a lower limit estimate for attrition. At the same time, the uncertainty of intentions data means this data likely over-estimates behaviour, which
can serve as an upper limit for attrition. Actual rates of attrition are likely to fall between the two limits, at around 2% per annum. It is likely that intentions to leave within one year are a more accurate measure of actual behaviour
than longer-term intentions. Due to the longitudinal nature of the ATWD, the relationship between longer-term intentions and actual behaviour can be tested over time.
Food for thought
Q. Do half of all teachers leave within the first 5 years?
A wide range of estimates for early career teacher attrition have been produced in Australia, with some indicating that up to 50% of teachers leave in the first five years. The analysis in this report shows that 1.25% percent of teachers
who registered the year after graduating from ITE discontinue registration each year. This means that attrition over the first five years is closer to 5% than 50%.
Retirement
Retirement occurs at highly variable ages which makes understanding attrition due to retirement challenging. Although the official retirement age is 67, the average age people retired in 2019 was 55.4 years (ABS 2020). The average age of retirement
corresponds to when the teacher workforce becomes more likely to intend to remain in the profession until retirement, rather than leave before retirement. As a result, it is likely that workforce exits after 55 are highly likely to be
retirements, with likelihood increasing with age.
In 2022, those who had left the profession were asked when they had ceased teaching or leadership, and the number of years since they started teaching were examined. Approximately half of those who had left did so in either 2020, 2021 or 2022
(49%), while many registered teachers had left more than 10 years ago, highlighting that data on more recent exits is likely to be more complete.
Attrition, as evidenced by additional analysis of 2022 departee’s experience levels, is largely uniformly distributed relative to the teacher workforce, at least up to 30-39 years of experience. The odds of teachers at each experience
level, from 1-5 years of experience to 30-39 years of experience, departing the profession range from 16% lower odds to 32% lower odds, respectively.
However, a greater proportion of departees than would be expected, based on the teacher workforce experience distribution, were among those with 40 or more years of experience (58 greater odds). A similar pattern was observed for 2021 departees.
Not surprisingly, teachers with over 40 years of experience are disproportionately likely to leave the profession.
Table 10: Experience profiles of workforce departees and the teacher workforce
| Years commenced since teaching |
|---|
| 1-5 | 6-9 | 10-19 | 20-29 | 30-39 | 40+ |
|---|
| Typical ages | Under 30 | 31-35 | 36-48 | 49-55 | 56-64 | Over 65 |
| 2022 departees | 16% | 17% | 29% | 15% | 9% | 16% |
| 2021 departees | 9% | 12% | 29% | 18% | 15% | 9% |
| 2022 teacher workforce | 21% | 15% | 28% | 17% | 12% | 8% |
Retention
Teachers intending to leave the profession reported the reasons that are motivating them and could report more than one reason. These reasons provide insights into the areas best targeted to change teachers’ career intentions.
The most cited categories of reasons for those intending to leave have consistently been ‘workload and coping’, ‘reward and recognition’ and ‘administrative workload’.
In 2022, the three most cited categories of reasons for intending to leave the teacher workforce prior to retirement were:
- Workload and coping: 92%
- Recognition and reward: 76%
- Administrative workload: 67%
The rankings of these reasons were consistent across classroom teachers, middle leaders, and senior leaders. The top two listed factors increased in frequency from 2020 to 2022 (‘workload and coping’ +8 percentage points; ‘recognition and reward’: +11 percentage points). The top two reasons cited were also at rates just higher than their pre-pandemic levels (highest levels pre-pandemic were in 2019; ‘workload and coping’ +4 percentage points; ‘recognition and reward’: +5 percentage points). The ‘classroom factors’, as the fourth most frequently reason, were cited 8 percentage points more often (2019: 55%, 2022: 63%).
The increase for ‘classroom factors’ from 2019 to 2022 was not confined to classroom teachers (+6 percentage points) and also affected middle and senior leaders (+8 and +10 percentage points, respectively). This means that across schools, issues of ‘insufficient support staff’, ‘class sizes being too large’, and ‘facing challenges with student behaviour management’ have increased.
The high level of challenge with ‘workload and coping’ has persisted and even increased over time, during a period where working hours in excess of paid hours for the full- and part-time working week have decreased slightly. When the change is examined annually (see Figure 15) from 2018 through to 2021, as working hours increased or decreased, so too did the selection of ‘workload and coping’ reasons. Up to, and through the impacts of COVID-19, there may have been a relationship between working hours and perceptions of a heavy workload. However, from 2021 to 2022, a period where working hours decreased , the perceptions of a heavy workload increased slightly.
As part of the National Teacher Workforce Action Plan, measures of teacher wellbeing are being incorporated into the ATWD Teacher Survey, which will allow the complexities of this relationship to be understood.
Figure 15: Annual percentage change in working hours and ‘workload and coping’ reasons for leaving’.
School culture is a reason that leaders stay, but classroom teachers leave
School culture was the sixth most frequently provided reason for intending to leave the teacher workforce in 2022. School culture was more commonly cited as a reason by classroom teachers intending to leave the profession (50%), than by middle leaders (47%) or senior leaders (43%). The opposite was true when reasons for remaining in the profession were examined. School culture was a more critical factor for senior leaders choosing to stay in the profession (60%), than for middle leaders (50%) or classroom teachers (47%).
Pay is rarely a reason that classroom teachers stay in the profession.
Across positions, the differences in the reasons teachers choose to remain in the profession also provide information relevant to understanding attrition. Classroom teachers in schools rarely indicated that they stayed because they were well paid relative to their skills and experience (15%). Although still not a common reason, it was slightly more commonly cited by middle leaders (16%) and senior leaders (19%).
Consistent with CRTs having a smaller proportion of total working hours as unpaid overtime, CRTs were most likely to indicate that they remained because they were well paid (25%).
Despite high intentions to leave the profession, the fact that many teachers have not yet made up their mind means there is large scope for retention initiatives to make an impact.
Understanding the teacher workforce in the context of modern careers can be further achieved by considering the longevity of careers to date, the career plans of teachers, and the potential available if those who were uncertain decided to
stay in the profession until retirement (see Figure 16). This analysis does not consider complexities such as whether a teacher is likely to be working full-time or part-time across their years intending to remain, and their potential
years remaining.
This analysis assumes an average potential career length of 44 years, based on the average career lengths of the oldest cohorts. The average proportion of potential career length that is likely to have been ‘lost’ is a product
of:
- How far before retirement teachers plan to leave the profession
- The age at which teachers typically entered the profession
Figure 16: Career length and career plans by age of teacherA major factor in the pattern seen above is the high uncertainty of career plans among younger teachers. From ages 25 to 30, the number of teaching career years that are likely
lost due to intentions to leave the profession increase rapidly. This coincides with reduced uncertainty of intentions, and increased intention not to remain in the profession up until retirement over this period. Total career
length expectations (years already worked plus years intending to work or remain) also decrease heavily from 25 to 30.
The potential number of working years indicates the number of years teachers who were unsure about their intentions could remain in the profession for prior to retirement, assuming that they
decided to do so. This figure is highest when teachers are younger (25-30) and more uncertain, which currently co-occur. Teachers at each of these ages are all early career teachers. To maximise this uncertainty into potential work and
teaching, it is important that early career teachers, regardless of the age they enter the profession, transition into teaching well. However, at the same time there have been falling rates of early career
teachers reporting receiving induction support. The weakening of induction could become a critical workforce issue in the future if these younger cohorts do not choose to remain in the workforce for reasons linked to this.