Managing teacher turnover in regional schools

Abstract

Employee resourcing comprising employment activities such as human resource planning, employee recruitment, selection, and adaptation, or retention planning and managing employee turnover seems to be a critical function of school management. It enables school managers to ensure the school has quality teachers and other employees it needs to achieve the expected objectives of the school. The biggest challenges of school managers in employee resourcing involve retaining teachers and dealing with teacher turnover. Based on the example of Czech regional schools, the article aims to discuss the current challenges of school managers in employee resourcing in regional schools and define possible ways to deal with the issue of retaining teachers and teacher turnover. The article applies findings of the authors' questionnaire survey on the practice of employee resourcing in Czech regional schools with the focus on the teachers' adaptation as a critical tool for retaining teachers. The authors' questionnaire survey was carried out in the second half of the school year 2018/2019 and in the first half of the school year 2019/2020. The respondents included managers of Czech preschools, elementary schools, and high schools. The answers were obtained from 19% of schools (116 out of 600 addressed schools). The findings show that surveyed regional schools can successfully deal with the challenges in employee resourcing, however, they should apply a more systematic approach, especially to the teachers' adaptation that could help them to deal with the challenge in retaining teachers and reducing the teacher turnover.