Globally, countries are facing increasing teacher shortages because of recruitment and retention issues. More recently, attention has been drawn to the high number of early-career teachers (ECT) – meaning those with five years of experience or less – leaving the profession. This challenge is particularly relevant to Wales, with figures indicating that 29% of teachers who left the profession in 2022 were ECTs.
Reasons for the high attrition figures of ECTs are complex but include workload pressures and a rise in pupils’ behavioural issues, mental health challenges and additional learning needs (ALN) in the classroom since the coronavirus pandemic. There is no simple solution to improve the retention of ECTs, but there is some evidence (Taylor et al., 2023; Nguyen et al., 2023; Egan et al., 2025; Van den Brande and Zuccollo, 2021) to suggest that providing high-quality and effective professional learning for teachers may improve teacher retention, or positively influence factors which may affect retention, such as wellbeing.
Partially in response to these challenges, in 2025 the Welsh Government announced their development of a Strategic Education Workforce Plan, aiming to embed the ‘vision and values’ for the sector to improve the education workforce. The announcement highlighted the need to enhance professional learning opportunities for teaching staff to support wellbeing and address issues surrounding recruitment and retention. The Welsh Government also recently established Dysgu, the national professional learning and leadership body, responsible for delivering high-quality and nationally-consistent professional learning for practitioners in maintained schools and settings in Wales.
To inform Dysgu and the development of the Strategic Education Workforce Plan, the Welsh Government asked the Wales Centre for Public Policy (WCPP) to bring together evidence on how teachers in other countries are supported through professional learning in the first five years of their career, including any evidence of impact on the retention of ECTs.
To do this, WCPP has commissioned six international experts to produce a case study on their country’s approach to professional learning. In addition to this, we will run two (closed) workshops with the case study authors, the Welsh Government and three Wales-based system experts to discuss the applicability of the research findings to the Welsh context. The findings of this work will help to inform the Welsh Government’s thinking on how to develop high-quality and effective professional learning for ECTs, responding to the following research questions:
- How are early-career teachers supported in the first five years of their careers, especially post-induction, in similar countries to Wales or in countries with similar education systems?
- What aspects of international professional learning provision for ECTs might be relevant to Wales' education system?
We will publish the case study report by Summer 2026. For any questions about this project, please contact Alex.Jones@wcpp.org.uk