As the UK Government sets out a renewed focus on workforce and leadership resilience in its recently announced reforms, teacher retention continues to pose a significant challenge, with one in three leaving their role within five years. To help schools to develop and upskill their staff from within, Tes Institute has launched a new report and a practical ‘grow your own’ framework designed to help multi-academy trusts and school groups build sustainable workforce strategies.
The report, titled Grow your own: Best practice for developing teaching talent in school trusts, draws on quantitative research and in-depth interviews with trust leaders across England. It reveals that 52% of trusts plan to increase professional development investment over the next three years. This comes as 55% say teacher training helps attract staff, while 50% report improved retention.
Inclusion remains a pressing priority for trusts, with specialist training such as SEND ranking among the top four professional development challenges, and less than half (45%) of teachers reporting confidence in supporting pupils with SEND.
The grow your own framework
The report identifies what works when it comes to developing, retaining, and empowering teaching talent at scale. Although 90% of responding trusts report that they provide a clear career development pathway for teaching staff, more than half would like to see greater focus on staff development at all levels in future. To support this, the report identifies eight key insights shaping effective professional development in 2026 and beyond. Themes include how to ensure CPD or teacher training programmes are consistent in quality across schools, adapting and personalising training content, how professional learning is delivered and how to ensure that learning is applied in the classroom.
Sam Gibbs, Trust Curriculum and Development Lead, Greater Manchester Education Trust, commented: “If we want every child to thrive, we need great teachers and we need to keep them. That means developing expertise at every stage of a teacher’s journey, from initial training right through to leadership. For multi‑academy trusts, this is not just about improving teaching in the here and now; it’s about building the capacity, culture and confidence that secure excellence for the long term. This report by Tes Institute shines a light on what effective teacher development looks like in trusts today.”
The Tes Institute report provides a structured model to help trusts embed professional development into their core strategy. Built around four pillars, vision and culture, structure and pathways, evaluation and impact, and collaboration and scale, the framework provides a clear implementation pathway for MAT leaders.
Hannah Senel-Walp, Director of Tes Institute, commented: “Professional development is foundational to the people strategy of any trust. It must be systemic, not piecemeal. Trusts that take a strategic, long-term approach to growing their own talent are not only strengthening retention, they are building cultures where teachers feel valued and inspired to stay. If we want every child to succeed, we must invest in the educators who make the biggest impact in classrooms each day.”
By embedding clear progression routes from Initial Teacher Training through to leadership, formalising professional learning communities and tracking impact through robust evaluation, trusts can link professional development directly to retention, wellbeing and long-term school improvement.
Read the full report here.