Liberal Democrats Warn of Teacher Exodus as Half Consider Leaving Within Five Years
The Liberal Democrats have published survey findings showing that nearly half of teachers currently in post in England are considering leaving the profession within the next five years. The party is urging Education Secretary Lucy Powell to fully fund teachers' pay rises from central government funds rather than requiring schools to absorb part of the cost from their own budgets.
The survey was conducted with the help of two major teaching unions: the National Education Union (NEU) and the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL). More than 900 teachers, headteachers and Special Educational Needs Coordinators (SENCOs — staff who oversee support for pupils with additional needs) responded. One in ten said they planned to leave within a year. More than three quarters of those surveyed, including former teachers, reported feeling "frequently or constantly burnt out" at work (BBC News).
The party's schools spokesperson, Caroline Voaden, called for an emergency package of measures to tackle what the Liberal Democrats described as a teacher recruitment and retention crisis. The proposals include enforcing teachers' legally mandated working hours, setting reasonable limits on overtime, and requiring all schools to introduce flexible working policies. The party also reiterated its call for teachers' pay awards to be fully funded by central government.
The Liberal Democrats did not identify where the money for their proposed policies would come from.
The survey's release coincides with a pay settlement for teachers in England. Salaries will rise by 3.5% from September, with a further 3% the following year. The Department for Education said the combined awards amount to almost 17% over two years. However, half of the pay increase will be drawn from existing school budgets — the same funding mechanism the Liberal Democrats want ministers to abandon.
The Department for Education pushed back against the suggestion of a retention crisis. A spokesperson said last year saw the lowest rate of teachers leaving the profession in England since 2010, alongside a record number of teachers returning to the classroom.
The NEU's general secretary, Daniel Kebede, has previously criticised the practice of funding pay awards from within existing school budgets — the same position the Liberal Democrats are now taking. The union's involvement in the survey gives the findings institutional weight, as the NEU and ASCL are two of the largest school leadership and teaching bodies in England.
The broader context here is one of rising political pressure on the Department for Education over how sustainable the teaching workforce is. The Liberal Democrats are positioning themselves as the parliamentary party most vocal on teacher retention. The 3.5% award sits below the most recent inflation figures, and because half of it must be found from within existing school budgets, headteachers will need to make cuts elsewhere to fund the rise. For a government that has made teacher recruitment a stated priority, a survey co-produced with two major unions showing one in ten serving teachers planning to leave within a year is an unwelcome development, whatever the Department's counter-figures on retention suggest.
There is a genuine tension between the two sets of data. The Department for Education points to a falling attrition rate and record numbers of returners. The Liberal Democrats, backed by the NEU and ASCL, point to burnout and short-term intention to leave. Both can be true at the same time: a lower overall exit rate does not rule out a significant group of serving teachers who are actively disillusioned. What the survey captures is intent rather than action, and intention-to-leave data is notoriously volatile — people who say they plan to quit do not always do so. But the breadth of the sample, at over 900 respondents drawn from across the profession in England, gives the findings a credibility that ministers will find hard to dismiss.
The policy gap is also revealing. The Liberal Democrats are asking for something ministers have consistently resisted: full central funding of the pay award, removing any obligation on schools to absorb the cost. Without an identified funding source for their own proposals, the party's demands function more as a political pressure point than a costed alternative. But school budgets are already under strain from rising employer National Insurance contributions and inflationary pressures on energy and staffing. The argument that schools cannot absorb further pay costs from within existing allocations is one that resonates with headteacher associations regardless of who is making it.
Teacher retention is a devolved matter — meaning it is handled separately by each UK nation. The survey covers England only, and the pay settlement applies to England. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland set their own pay awards and retention strategies through Holyrood (the Scottish Parliament), the Senedd (the Welsh Parliament) and Stormont (the Northern Ireland Assembly) respectively. The underlying pressures of workload and burnout, though, are familiar across all four nations.
International comparisons offer additional perspective. In the United States, 18% of teachers indicated an intention to leave their jobs in 2026 (RAND Corporation). Between 2020-21 and 2021-22, 15.1% of US teachers moved schools or left the profession entirely, according to the Learning Policy Institute (LPI). While the two countries' systems are not directly comparable, the figures suggest that teacher attrition is a challenge well beyond Westminster's remit.
For those working in education policy, the survey reinforces a familiar fault line: pay awards that are not fully funded from central government shift the cost onto the very institutions they are meant to support. Whether the Liberal Democrats' intervention shifts ministerial thinking is, for now, a question for the autumn.
