The Revolving Door: Can Schools Sustainably Improve If Their Teachers Keep Leaving?

An honest editorial on what teacher turnover costs a school’s long-term improvement.

I have worked on school improvement since 2005. Over the past 21 years, I have found that it takes an average of three years for changes at a school to become permanent. School changes unfold in a specific sequence. Year 1 is the pilot; often, the practice is unevenly understood, and implementation is inconsistent. In Year 2, the practice is no longer seen as new, is better understood, and is accepted. By Year 3, the change has become a way of working for the school community. 

International schools encounter a phenomenon that most schools in the United States don’t have to contend with. Summer comes, and a third of the team integral to the school and driving the change leaves to accept posts at other schools in Dubai or elsewhere. Then, before you know it, during those first two weeks when you welcome teachers back in August, you find yourself standing in front of a room of talented newcomers, explaining the basics again. 

School leaders all know this feeling. As a school administrator focused on continuous school improvement, I am always concerned about whether a school can improve year on year if the people responsible for the changes leave. This is an uncomfortable question that many people choose not to address, but I find it necessary to answer candidly.

After years of working on school improvement and leadership, my honest answer is that it is not sustainable unless we give teacher retention the consideration it deserves.  Teacher attrition goes beyond a human resources issue; we need to address it and treat it as a school improvement strategy.

Improvement is slowly built

School improvement isn’t just a document- the school improvement plan- a point we often lose sight of amid the rush of initiatives and inspections. It is a set of shared habits: a collective understanding of what good teaching and learning look like, developed over years among faculty and staff and reinforced through agreed-upon routines. Trust is the foundation of school improvement. In their landmark study, Anthony Bryk and Barbara Schneider identified relational trust as a core resource that enables meaningful change: when trust is strong, reforms take hold; when it is weak, they stall (Bryk & Schneider, 2002). This kind of trust cannot simply be installed. It accrues over time, between specific people, through hundreds of micro-interactions. 

Teacher turnover doesn’t just impact improvement – it costs students

Many senior leadership teams (SLT) mistakenly believe that when a teacher leaves, the damage is contained because it affects only the teacher’s next class. However, the evidence shows otherwise. A large-scale study of New York City schools by Matthew Ronfeldt and colleagues found that student achievement in English and mathematics declined because of teacher turnover. Strikingly, it also harmed the achievement of students whose own teachers stayed because turnover fractures the collaboration and collective knowledge the whole staff depends on (Ronfeldt et al., 2013). The effects were felt most deeply in schools serving disadvantaged students: churn hits hardest precisely where stability matters most.

That contextualizes the problem.  Turnover isn’t managed one vacancy at a time; it is a school-wide problem with lingering effects.

The hidden and not-so-hidden costs

From the outside, attrition may not seem costly. One teacher leaves, and another joins in their stead; but every departure creates a ripple effect. International private schools can’t depend on a school district to attract new talent. Instead, school groups use external agencies such as Edvectus, Schrole, Search Associates, TES, and Teacher Horizons to identify candidates with the educational background, credentials, skill set, and experience that fit their school.  

The two highest costs are time and leadership attention. Every recruitment cycle draws on the senior leadership team’s finite time and energy for staffing: interviewing, onboarding, and professionally developing the individual, rather than allowing them to focus on teaching and learning. 

The UAE’s reality

If you lead an international school in the UAE, you might be sitting there nodding along as you read this.  Some of our issues stem from our operating model.  When we hire a teacher, typically we give them a two-year contract.  As a school, we hope the teacher becomes a valuable part of the community and chooses to stay longer.  However, contractually, they can move on without penalties after two years.  Two-year contracts, expatriate mobility, and a global recruitment market mean turnover is built in. According to Mancuso et al. (2010), across one large region of international schools (outside the UAE), annual teacher turnover averaged around 17%, with individual schools ranging from zero to a staggering 60%. When teachers choose to leave at the end of a first contract, Odland and Ruzicka (2009) posit that the decisive factors are administrative leadership, compensation, and personal circumstances.  At the time of writing, I do not have the latest published figures for Dubai because inspections are paused. 

From personal experience, I can share that during the 2022–2023 academic year, my previous school had a 40% turnover rate, including members of the middle leadership team (MLT); in 2023–2024, we had a 20% turnover rate (including SLT & MLT); and the exit data indicated that the 2024–2025 turnover rate would be 7%. Unfortunately, in May 2025, when we announced we would permanently close our doors in July 2026, that changed the trend. We expected most families to leave in July 2025, which affected teachers’ positions.

Truthfully, in our context, some turnover is structural and beyond any one leader’s control. The question I asked myself was not “how do we stop it?” Instead, the SLT and MLT at our school reflected on “how do we slow it, and what systems do we need to put in place so that improvement continues to survive if we can’t prevent it?”  To develop long-term solutions, we carefully reviewed trends in Dubai’s data and analyzed how we could improve our practices.

The overall picture in the UAE aligns with the global picture. In a recent study of teachers in UAE private schools, Mohammad and Borkoski (2024) found that supportive leadership, a manageable administrative workload, professional recognition, and clear career progression were decisive factors in teachers’ intentions to stay. Dubai’s school inspectors have long noted a link between instability and quality, reporting turnover rates of around 30% in lower-rated schools. Dubai has not published teacher turnover rates since 2023, so current figures may differ from the last published numbers.

Can turnover be turned around?

The uncomfortable truth for some schools is that teachers rarely leave because of things leaders cannot change: the students, the city, or the challenges every expatriate faces when living far from home. They leave because of working conditions. Susan Moore Johnson’s research is clear: teachers are driven out less by the students they teach than by the conditions in which they teach—specifically, the quality of school leadership, the culture leaders create, and the strength of their bonds with colleagues (Simon & Johnson, 2015).

The single strongest predictor of whether teachers stay is their perception of a supportive principal (head of school), specifically in international schools (Mancuso et al., 2010).  This aligns with the findings from Mohammad and Borkoski (2024).  The good news is that leadership drives the main mechanisms for improving teacher retention and ensuring continuous school improvement.  Teacher retention and school improvement are both intimately interlinked.  When you stop viewing school improvement as something done only for the children and shift the paradigm to include every stakeholder in the building, you begin to build a school culture worth staying for.

The steps my team and I took to change the rate of attrition

I transitioned into the principal role while we were actively working to make widespread changes. One of my first steps was to meet with the SLT members for open, sometimes blunt conversations about what needed to change to improve everyone’s experience at work. I then had similar discussions with the MLT, inviting them to share their frustrations. To help them feel safe expressing their opinions, I provided an anonymous survey so they could speak freely without fear of repercussions. I used both sets of feedback to build a picture of some of our underlying issues. Then I took the data to HR for a crucial, private conversation. Although the process was sometimes uncomfortable, it gave us a clear picture of where to begin and what we needed to address urgently to make the changes we sought. 

This was a direction to start from, but not the starting point. 

My next step was to open the door to faculty and staff to share suggestions on how we could maintain forward momentum and, specifically, what we could do to improve teacher retention.  I would like to provide additional context to this process.  Although I was new to the principal position at the school, I wasn’t unknown to the faculty.

This process took me approximately two weeks to complete.  Like the survey I gave the MLT, I provided the teachers with an anonymous multiple-choice and open-ended survey so I could quantify the data and run a gap analysis using quantitative and qualitative data.  After the survey, I scheduled one-to-one meetings with every teacher to ask about their specific needs, what they felt we were already doing well, how we could further enhance our practices, and, lastly, what they felt could be improved overall.  These conversations revealed some underlying issues that I wasn’t aware of, and I am grateful to the teachers for co-building a safe space with me so that we could get to the root of the changes we needed to make.

This was my process, which may not fit everyone’s personality or circumstances.  So what can leaders do to actually slow attrition and build toward more sustainable, long-term improvements?

Steps towards a new direction

1.    Be the supportive head.  Support must be visible, trust earned, and decision-making shared.  Distributed leadership is one of the strongest retention levers we have in international schools (Mancuso et al., 2010).  Walk your schools, visit classrooms daily, and engage with parents.  The simple act of showing up is powerful.

2.    Invest in real induction and mentoring.  Structured onboarding and mentoring measurably reduce attrition and help new teachers become effective faster (Ingersoll & Strong, 2011).  Induction is a teacher's real introduction to a school. Make the experience pleasant and, from day one, begin to cultivate a sense of belonging.  This is especially important to international teachers.  Many teachers arrive alone and find themselves far from home, in an environment unlike what they are used to. 

The support we should provide all teachers is twofold.  One is establishing psychological safety, and the second is professional support.  Beyond induction, every school leader should prioritize building teachers' capacity.  When speaking with other leaders, I always share that I believe we should do for teachers what we ask of students: personalize learning.  Coaching is instrumental to a successful school. 

3.    Protect working conditions.  If you can cut administrative tasks, eliminate them.  Take a real look at why we ask people to do certain tasks that may drain time and may not be the best return on investment.  With AI, there are many opportunities to reduce administrative workload and free up time.  It is more important to build time for collaboration so that teachers have a real voice in decisions. UAE teachers name administrative burden and workload as decisive (Mohammad & Borkoski, 2024; Simon & Johnson, 2015).

4.    Grow and keep your middle leaders.  The leaders you develop are the leaders you retain.  Create a succession management plan and evaluate where your teachers are in their professional journeys.  Some teachers show leadership qualities early, but others may be more introverted and hesitate to express their interests.  Check your schedule and designate time to have these conversations with your faculty.  Career pathways, recognition, and meaningful progression explain why strong teachers move in search of them elsewhere (Mohammad & Borkoski, 2024).

5.    Build systems that outlast individuals.  In my opinion, this is one of the most imperative things all heads of schools should do.  The system, when created with intention, thought, consideration, and time, outlasts staff changes and provides continuity for the school community.  Document your routines; when people leave, have them prepare deliberate and detailed handovers, and maintain a culture of coaching.  This is how improvement survives the turnover you can’t prevent.

6.    Use compensation and personal support levers that are in your control.  Retention incentives, housing, and family support speak directly to the structural reasons teachers leave at the end of a contract (Odland & Ruzicka, 2009).  One approach I have used successfully is compensation time.  Teachers work long hours.  When it was within my locus of control, I tracked the time and returned it to them when they needed it for doctor’s appointments or other occasions. When I lived in the United States, my school district included personal days in our contracts.  Teacher burnout is well documented.  The ability to take a day to simply rest, without having to visit a physician for an official letter, is something that teachers appreciate.  I feel school groups in the UAE should consider this practice.  Designating three days within an academic year as personal, I believe, would reduce the number of sick days teachers take.

Stability is the precondition for long-term sustainable improvement

This brings us back to the original question: can schools sustainably improve if their teachers keep leaving?  The honest answer is no, not on a workforce that resets every two years. The goal is never zero turnover because, in our context, that isn’t realistic nor always desirable.  The goal is to lose fewer professionals, improve onboarding, and build systems that hold steady when good people do move on.

Stability is not the enemy of progress and ambition; it is their precondition. A school that retains highly effective employees long enough for their work to compound improves year after year. Retention is often an unspoken factor driving school improvement. Recognizing how vital it is opens up a broader conversation about how we can pursue continuous improvement for all stakeholders.

References

Bryk, A. S., & Schneider, B. (2002). Trust in schools: A core resource for improvement. Russell Sage Foundation.

Ingersoll, R. M., & Strong, M. (2011). The impact of induction and mentoring programs for beginning teachers: A critical review of the research. Review of Educational Research, 81(2), 201–233. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654311403323

Mancuso, S. V., Roberts, L., & White, G. P. (2010). Teacher retention in international schools: The key role of school leadership. Journal of Research in International Education, 9(3), 306–323. https://doi.org/10.1177/1475240910388928

Mohammad, A., & Borkoski, C. (2024). Organizational conditions and teacher turnover in private schools of United Arab Emirates. Social Sciences & Humanities Open, 9, 100801. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssaho.2023.100801

Odland, G., & Ruzicka, M. (2009). An investigation into teacher turnover in international schools. Journal of Research in International Education, 8(1), 5–29. https://doi.org/10.1177/1475240908100679

Ronfeldt, M., Loeb, S., & Wyckoff, J. (2013). How teacher turnover harms student achievement. American Educational Research Journal, 50(1), 4–36. https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831212463813

Simon, N. S., & Johnson, S. M. (2015). Teacher turnover in high-poverty schools: What we know and can do. Teachers College Record, 117(3), 1–36. https://doi.org/10.1177/016146811511700305