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Partnering with purpose to tackle the biggest challenges in:
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In many places, teacher shortages persist because systems place excessive demands on staff, making teaching feel unsustainable. Recruitment and retention improve when early careers are protected, development is continuous and practice-focused, and teaching is treated as a supported long-term profession with clear progression pathways.
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Challenge #1
Why are government systems struggling to recruit and retain high-quality teachers – and what will fix it?
Government systems often struggle to recruit and retain high-quality teachers because teaching too often feels like unsupported survival work rather than a profession people can grow in. Heavy workload, early career pressure, and weak induction mean many capable teachers leave before they have a chance to become confident practitioners. Based on our extensive experience working with teachers around the world, we believe that this is not about motivation alone: systems create attrition when they expect teachers to cope rather than learn. Where early career support is thin or inconsistent, teaching quickly loses its appeal – and recruitment suffers as a result.
The problem is compounded by professional development that is fragmented, theoretical, or detached from classroom reality. Across contexts, governments invest in training but too often see little return because it is delivered as one-off courses rather than sustained improvement. Our Early Career Professional Development Programme in England and the Literacy and Numeracy Coaching Programme in Brunei point to the same lesson: teachers stay when development is practical, continuous, and embedded in schools, with trained mentors or coaches who help them improve their day-to-day practice. This kind of support builds competence, confidence, and agency – some of the strongest drivers of retention.
What makes the difference at system level is treating teaching as a long-term career with progression, not a short-term post. Our Leaders in Teaching programme in Ethiopia, in partnership with the Mastercard Foundation, shows how recruitment, training, leadership development and motivation work best when designed as a single pipeline, particularly for younger and female teachers.
Across our work, the pattern is clear: retention improves when early careers are protected, development visibly improves teaching, and the system signals that teaching is valued, supported, and worth staying in.
Challenge #2
Why is teacher professional development not translating into improved practice in the classroom, and what needs to change to achieve this goal?
When teacher professional development does not sufficiently change what teachers do in classrooms, there is no benefit to learners. In many systems, professional development emphasises exposure to new ideas rather than mastery of practice, offering limited opportunities for teachers to try out, embed, and refine what they learn over time. Our extensive experience has shown us that even well intentioned training falls short when it is episodic, generic, or weakly connected to the specific curriculum, pupils (including those with additional or complex learning needs), and challenges teachers face day to day.
Where professional development improves learning outcomes, it is because it is designed around effectiveness, not attendance. Our Early Career Professional Development Programme in England clearly shows how sustained, structured learning, combined with high quality mentoring helps early career teachers translate evidence into better classroom decisions over time, strengthening both teaching quality and consistency. In Brunei, the Literacy and Numeracy Coaching Programme similarly demonstrated that embedded instructional coaching – focused on real lessons, feedback, and incremental improvement – was far more effective than stand alone training in changing practice at scale, with benefits visible in both teaching quality and system performance.
We believe that professional development should be designed to support sustained improvement. For example, in the Leaders in Teaching programme in Ethiopia, professional development is situated within a coherent system that links recruitment, training, coaching, leadership development, and motivation.
By focusing on strengthening day-to-day teaching, building professional confidence and providing progression over time, professional development becomes more likely to reach learners rather than dissipate at system level. Across edt’s work, the lesson is consistent: learners benefit when teacher development is continuous, practice-focused, and reinforced by the wider system, enabling teachers not just to learn more, but to teach better.
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Let's work together
What's the biggest challenge you're facing?
edt works strategically with partners around the world to design and implement solutions to the most pressing education challenges. Get in touch to find out more about our approach to teacher recruitment, retention, and professional development, or to discuss how more effective professional development models might benefit your education system.
Contact Tony McAleavy, Chief Education & Skills Officer
Having originally joined edt in 2001 as Teaching and Learning Director for our CfBT Education Services team, Tony now has corporate oversight of the educational impact of all edt's activities and our public domain research programme. Across his career, he brings over 45 years of experience in education development, and has worked extensively on school reform in many countries, particularly in the Middle East.