Every year, thousands of teachers leave the job midway or after the academic year for a job at another school or for another profession altogether.
While it’s difficult to arrive at the approximate number of teachers leaving the job every year, it is known that teacher attrition in India is unusually high and there are several reasons for that.
Losing a teacher during a school year can always harm students’ education more than anything else and it can possibly set a student’s education and learning back in a major way, can cause disruption in academic and non-academic activities, and lead to heavy loss of teaching time. Teachers are key to improving the lives of students and youths and it’s important to keep teachers working in a school for as long as possible in order to deliver quality learning.
A Teacher being the backbone of the School needs continuous support in terms they should feel secure and also being acknowledged. At Orchids The International School our major focus is these two aspects above to ensure a teacher stays with us for long & students too shouldn’t face any challenges during their course of learning.
Here are some ways to reduce teacher attrition
Include teacher training in schools
The first thing that schools need to do to reduce the teacher attrition rate is to include teacher training programs in the school. Most of the time, it so happens that teachers, after graduating from teacher training programs and starting to work right after, do not have the time to upgrade and upskill their knowledge. This can lead to them being burdened with difficult tasks and subjects. Having an in-house training program or sending teachers to professional development will improve and strengthen their skills.
After parents, it’s the teachers that have the strongest influence on the students. So training teachers through programs can make them effective educators and make them stay in the system for long.
Improve teacher hiring process
In order to hire and retain teachers, you need to adopt an effective hiring process. If need be, you must change the way you hire teachers. Find our if your hiring process is outdated and if it is, then you need to make changes and improvements in the way you onboard teachers. Your hiring process must be very professional and not ad hoc. Conduct exit interviews to understand why the teachers are leaving so that you can be better prepared to deal with the teachers and ensure they stay in the profession.
Start teachers mentoring programs
Everyone needs mentoring. Mentorship helps teachers learn and upgrade. Teachers that are out of the support system are known to be twice as susceptible to leaving the job than teachers with the support system. To begin with, you need to have induction and support for new teachers as it will not only greatly increase their retention but help you fasten their professional growth.
Improve working conditions
One of the biggest reasons why teachers leave school is due to lack of support from the management and the second reason is working conditions. Teachers can get overwhelmed due to long working hours or poor relationships with the principal and management. If that is the case, then you need to remove the silos and make the workplace exciting. Secondly, hire a principal who can gel around well with academic and non-academic staff. Thirdly, if you are hiring a new principal or a teacher, have a preparation program in order to help them know and understand each other.
Retaining teachers is absolutely important for the academic success of the students. A teacher leaving midway through the academic year might not augur well for students as it may completely hamper their studies. Bringing a new teacher mid-way also does little benefit to the students as they need to get adjusted to the new teacher and her way of teaching.
