Investigation of early career teacher attrition and the impact of induction programs in Western Australia
Introduction
Teacher attrition has been a concerning policy issue for a long time Heyns (1988); (Metzke, 1988; Radecki, 1987). Even in the 1970's and early 1980's, 25 % of teachers who completed training programs never started, or left teaching within a few years (Heyns, 1988; Murnane, 1981). The attrition rate of ECTs in Australia is not well established, it is estimated and these estimates are highly variable (Australian Institute for Teaching & School Leadership, 2016). Educational leaders must have accurate data to make an informed judgement on whether or not attrition rates are high. The Department of Education Western Australia (the Department) currently employs over 26,000 teachers. Annually, it employs approximately 1000 early career teachers (ECTs). With such a large number of teachers, planning for workforce supply is crucial. Thus, accurate and informed decision-making concerning attrition and retention is imperative.
In Australia, accurate attrition figures are difficult to obtain as each state and territory education department gathers its own exit statistics and are often reluctant to release the data publicly (Buchanan et al., 2013). With this study, the Department is willing to share the figures of those leaving the profession which will contribute Australian evidence of attrition rates and end the reliance on estimates and international figures (Weldon, 2018). While it is imperative to understand how many and which ECTs leave, it is also important to investigate those who stay in order to ensure optimal retention conditions for all new ECTs entering, and those continuing in the profession (Manuel, 2003).
This study focuses on establishing the ECT attrition rate and profiling ECTs who are more likely to leave teaching. Weldon (2018) suggested that when investigating ECT attrition it would be beneficial to know if attrition rates change over time, and about subsets of the teaching workforce for example: which school environments work to retain ECTs; are there differences in retention in metropolitan and regional settings; are there differences between fields of education; and what is the impact of temporary positions on ECTs. Additionally, this study assesses how ECT university preparation and employment induction experiences, intent to stay in the profession, and resignation reasons related to the risk of attrition.
Section snippets
Literature review
Teacher attrition has many profound effects. There are financial costs for the recruitment, induction and training of new teachers (Borman & Dowling, 2008; Milanowski & Odden, 2007; Nweke, Eads, Afolabi, Stephens, & Toth, 2006). The Nweke et al. (2006) study showed the American state of Georgia paid $400 million to replace the teachers lost to attrition, while Borman and Dowling (2008) found the total cost of replacing American public school teachers was nearly $2.2 billion, in 2001. Teacher
Research population
The population studied included 9850 ECTs (M = 89.5, SD = 297.0) employed by the Department from 2004 to 2014 in relation to attrition data and 551 (M = 137.8, SD = 117.8) secondary education ECTs associated with survey data (2010, 2016, 2017, 2018) (Table 1). The average age of the 9850 ECTs was 30.7 years (SD = 9.2) and 29.5 years (SD = 8.3) for the 551 ECTs. Potentially, a limitation of the study was using two different study populations. However, the GTIP was established in 2006 in which
Attrition data
Observational research and quantification of teacher pay data was used to establish a workforce flow frequency, determining as previously defined who stayed, left or had interruptions over a five-year period, from their commencement date.
A binomial logistic regression was chosen as the dependent variable was dichotomous (stay or left) and it would describe the data and explain the relationship between the dependent binary variable and the independent variables. Logistic regression was used to
What is the ECT attrition rate?
A workforce flow over a five-year period, of ECTs who stayed, left or had interruptions was established for 9850 ECTs. For all fields of education, a higher proportion (53.1 %) of ECTs stayed (M = 475.18, SD = 178.05) as opposed to those who left (32.4 %) (M = 289.91, SD = 103.64) or interrupted (14.6 %) (M = 130.36, SD = 45.68) (Fig. 1).
A higher proportion of secondary education ECTs (39.1 %) (M = 124.64, SD = 51.06) left (Fig. 2) as opposed to 29.2 % (M = 136.91, SD = 51.24) primary (Fig. 3)
Discussion
When investigating attrition, the levels of inquiry included:
Conclusion
This study ascertained WA ECT’s attrition rate, but has not necessarily alleviated the concern regarding reliable evidence to support claims of teacher attrition rates in Australia (Weldon, 2018). As shown, depending on how attrition is defined and measured impacts on the results. It is recommended to establish a data dictionary of agreed key terms and metrics as a guide to understanding and using data would better facilitate comparative studies. Having comparable data at this level would
Contribution
Janine Wyatt 50 %.
Michael O’Neill 50 %.
Funding
No external funding was received for this work.
Ethical approval
Approval was obtained from the Human Research Ethics Committee, University of Notre Dame, Reference number 019045F on the 16 April 2019.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors report no declarations of interest.
This research has not been previously published in part or in full elsewhere.
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