TALIS 2018: Teacher Working Conditions, Turnover and Attrition. Statistical Working Paper

England currently faces a shortage of teachers, in part due to declining retention. Research suggests that one important influence on teachers' decisions about whether to leave teaching is the quality of working conditions in their school. Understanding which specific aspects of working conditions have the strongest relationship with retention could therefore help improve the supply of teachers. This report uses data collected from a large sample of teachers in the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) 2018, linked to data from the School Workforce Census (SWC), to investigate how the quality of working conditions varies and how it influences both job satisfaction and whether teachers subsequently leave their school or the teaching profession overall. Prior analysis using the TALIS 2013 data investigated the relationships between school working conditions and teacher job satisfaction and desire to move school. The present research updates and extends that analysis. In particular, the new data affords the opportunity to compare working conditions across primary and secondary phases, model the relationship between working conditions and whether teachers are observed to actually leave their school or the profession, investigate the importance of school discipline, and compare changes in working conditions for lower secondary teachers over time. [For the 2013 report, "TALIS 2013: Working Conditions, Teacher Job Satisfaction and Retention. Statistical Working Paper," see ED604491.]