Could the solution to teacher retention be hiding in plain sight? In schools where participatory leadership and teacher collaboration are uplifted, both teachers and students thrive, says Carlos Vargas, chief of teacher development at UNESCO. Drawing from global research, Vargas reveals how countries from Kazakhstan to Cuba are keeping classrooms staffed.
Vargas leads the International Task Force on Teachers for Education 2030, or Teacher Task Force (TTF), a worldwide coalition committed to enhancing the teaching profession. In 2024, UNESCO and TTF released a report on the global teacher shortage. In discussing the findings, Vargas shares what gives him hope for the future of the profession.
UNESCO’s global report on teachers reveals a sobering statistic—that schools will need an additional 44 million teachers worldwide by 2030. Are education systems prepared to fill those vacancies?
It depends on the reasons behind those vacancies. The global report shows that the issue of teacher shortages is multidimensional. However, we found that two main factors contribute to shortages: demographic change and teacher attrition.
In some highly populated areas, particularly sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, you have significant growth in school-aged populations. You have more children, so you need more schools, more classrooms, and more teachers. It’s a demand-driven scenario.
Demographic change is also happening due to aging populations. In countries such as Bulgaria, Estonia, and Lithuania, over half of teachers at the lower secondary level are over 50 years old. With these more predictable demographic trends, filling vacancies is a matter of planning.
But that’s not the case in the rest of the world. The report shows that 58 percent of the estimated global shortage of 44 million teachers can be attributed to teachers leaving the profession. In Europe and North America, almost 90 percent of the shortage is due to teacher attrition.
Given that the majority of shortages are caused by teachers leaving the profession rather than increased demand, how should education systems prioritize their retention strategies?
Working conditions are at the center of it. On the one hand, there are material working conditions related to salary, resources, workloads, etc. On the other hand, there are questions of status: Teachers are vastly underappreciated. To what extent do we trust teachers? To what extent do we conceive of teaching as a prestigious profession that contributes to overall social development, well-being, economic growth, and sustainability?
If you consider the multiplicity of factors behind shortages, the policy measures that one can take are just as varied. But improvement of the working conditions of teachers and the enhancement of the status of the teaching profession must be prioritized.
In schools where leadership is participatory, where teachers are consulted in important decisions, the learning outcomes of students are better.
The leaky bucket analogy is often used to describe the challenge of teacher retention. Can you share an example or two of the innovative ways countries are successfully plugging that leak?
One of the key working conditions to address, the report finds, is improving salaries. There are a handful of countries that are raising the net salaries of teachers, such as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Thailand, and Scotland.
There are also countries where teacher pensions are contributing to retention. In China, particularly in Shanghai, once a teacher retires, they receive one hundred percent of their pensionable remuneration. That’s quite an incentive for retainment. Of course, in the case of China, this is compounded with a profound respect of the profession. Young people in China actually want to become teachers because they see not only the financial incentives and material working conditions, but the respect for the figure of the teacher. We used to have this respect for teachers in many, many communities around the world, but we seem to be losing it. There’s an erosion of the prestige of teaching.
Something the report shows as well is that while structural changes need to be made to improve the working conditions of teachers, there are day-to-day actions that can make a difference in their well-being. This is where school leaders come in.
We have a study in Latin America called the Estudio Regional Comparativo y Explicativo, which is the regional comparative study of education outcomes in Latin America. Similar to PISA, every four years students are tested for different competencies across 19 countries. My colleagues in Chile who run this usually do an associated factor analysis; basically, they determine what explains the differences in terms of achievement within and between countries.
One of the factors is, of course, teachers. What they found is that in those schools where school leadership is participatory, where teachers are consulted in decisions in areas like curriculum and assessment, not only is there a better school climate and better well-being of teachers and learners, but ultimately the learning outcomes of students are better.
That’s an important link. Can you share an example of what this collaborative decision making might look like in practice?
We have seen in countries like Cuba, Scotland, and Chile that induction programs for both novice teachers and principals are improving retention. This welcoming environment and intergenerational transmission of knowledge and know-how from experienced mentors not only helps young educators develop their professional identity, but it helps teachers feel like they are in company—that the profession is not a lonely one. That it is not you against the world in a classroom; it is a truly collaborative profession.
These induction and mentoring programs are indispensable because when teachers leave the profession, they mostly do it within the first five years. Once a teacher has been in the profession for about 10 years, they are much more likely to stay.
This idea of having a collective, collaborative approach to teaching is very important because it has implications in the way we think about teaching. It has policy implications as to who makes decisions, so that teachers are not only “implementers of curriculum.”
And it has implications for teacher education. How do we train our teachers? How collaborative are the forms of the pedagogies that we choose? If we believe that teachers are knowledge producers, are we allowing them to lead their own professional development? The importance of communities of practice, for example, of learning exchange, cannot be overlooked.
In the Republic of Korea, they have a public policy on forming communities of practice with teachers at the provincial level. Teachers are provided the space to collaborate, to learn together, and to lead change. So, of course, you have more ownership of your profession when you participate in its shaping.
At G20 South Africa this past July, Carlos Vargas advocated for lifelong teacher-led learning rooted in collaboration and reflection. Photo courtesy of the G20 South African Presidency.
You’ve said that the working conditions of teachers are the learning conditions of students. Does autonomy, specifically, have the most direct impact on both teacher retention and student outcomes?
I would say autonomy and accountability. There’s a very fine balance to strike because in our preoccupation to provide high-quality education, we have often devised these teacher accountability systems with punitive measures; in some countries, teacher performance is based on adherence to scripted pedagogies—you tell teachers what to do, when to do it, how to teach it, with whom to do it, and then they get evaluated so that they do it the way they were taught to do it. Then you want teacher autonomy or you want teacher innovation? It’s a contradiction. While it is true that quality is important, that quality should be based on the pedagogical knowledge and practice of teachers.
In Finland, for example, teachers have very high levels of autonomy. They are trusted to make decisions in curriculum, assessment, school management, etc. The trust is so high, in fact, that they got rid of the inspectorate system. There’s no teacher inspection in Finland. Of course, this is paired with top-notch teacher education and a qualification at the master’s level that very much guarantees teachers are prepared to enter the classroom. But at the core, autonomy is fundamental.
What teachers really dislike is having to cope with administrative chores—like excessive paperwork—that can seem pointless. This is an area where school leaders can make a difference.
What’s the biggest misconception school leaders have about what motivates teachers and why they leave?
The biggest misconception is that there’s a lack of capacity or lack of commitment. This goes back to the social construction of teachers—it is often thought that teachers don’t know what they should know or what they’re trained to do. This lack of trust affects autonomy and undermines relationships, leading quite often to micromanagement and inspection.
When leaders try to address retention, they often focus on surface-level fixes like reducing teaching time or adding aides to a classroom. While workload matters, the data tells us something different. Research from OECD suggests that what actually burns teachers out is administrative chores—not time spent teaching, even though teaching requires heavy preparation. Teachers don’t mind being in the classroom, and they don’t mind the relational aspect of their work. What they really dislike is having to cope with administrative chores—like excessive paperwork—that can seem pointless. This is an area where school leaders can make a difference.
Based on your global research, what gives you the most hope about the future of the teaching profession?
What gives me the most hope is that the transformation of the profession is possible, that the transformation of education with teachers in the lead is possible.
We saw it during COVID-19. We gave teachers autonomy, and we asked them to adjust to school closures and hybrid learning. We relied on the work of teachers worldwide to sustain education, and they did it quite successfully. Teachers didn’t need directives and directions to adapt their practice; they utilized the resources they had and often made their own curricular decisions.
That gives me hope because it’s a very recent example of teachers taking the lead to transform education. Unfortunately, after COVID, we went back to business as usual. It was a missed opportunity, but it shows how teachers can transform education from within when given autonomy and resources, rather than waiting for these “great reforms” to happen. The future of education lies in the everyday work of teachers.
What’s one key message you want school leaders to understand about supporting and retaining teachers?
The message goes back to trust and collaboration. School leaders need to invite teachers to the decision-making table in every aspect of education—not just because teachers can contribute valuable insights and learn from one another, but because this collaborative approach directly improves retention and motivation. It ultimately gives teachers the leading role they should have in transforming education.
Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for space and clarity.
