The pressures of the pandemic, combined with unresolved legacy issues marking the teaching profession such as relatively low remunerations compared to other professions, heavy workloads, and in more recent years, growing bureaucratic and administrative regimes, have had irrefutable adverse impacts on teacher morale and their sense of career optimism, paving the way for some to decide to exit the teaching workforce. This exit decision has contributed to a teacher shortage crisis in many parts of the world prompting governments to seek ‘effective’ solutions to attract and retain teachers.

The intensity of the teacher shortage problems is greater in schools serving socio-economically marginalised communities. In these historically hard-to-staff schools, material poverty, geographical isolation, over-representation of historically under-served students combined with inadequate funding, resource stretch and understaffing create more complex working conditions for teachers. Many of these schools have limited access to resources and generate higher teacher stress levels associated with meeting the diverse and more complex needs of marginalised students and their families (Hargreaves & Fullan, 2020). This presents unique challenges for teachers who are called upon to address deeply entrenched historical, social and economic inequalities through everyday teaching practices and classroom relationships. Addressing structural inadequacies individually can cause ‘de-moralisation’ for teachers and lead to their exit decisions (Santoro, 2018).

This symposium focuses on teacher shortages in historically hard-to-staff schools. While the challenges associated with working in hard-to-staff schools are well-documented, less is known about the enabling conditions that can help build teacher satisfaction/capacity and improve retention of teachers in these school settings. This symposium draws on diverse conceptual and methodological approaches to identify effective policy responses, initiatives, and support mechanisms that can reduce teacher turnover in schools that serve the most marginalised students. In addition to a critical approach that examines the adequacy of existing policy frameworks and practices in improving teacher retention, this symposium focuses on effective responses to teacher shortages in hard-to-staff school settings from Europe and internationally. The overarching aim is to address the following inter-related questions through a synthesis of conceptual and empirical studies:

1. What are the challenges that teachers face in historically hard-to-staff school settings?
2. What are the major policy responses to these challenges in various national contexts within Europe and internationally?
3. What principles can help attract, prepare, and retain teachers in the schools that need them most?
4. How can this emerging scholarship help inform a more coherent response to teacher shortage problems in historically hard-to-staff schools?

Hargreaves, A., & Fullan, M. (2020). Professional capital after the pandemic: Revisiting and revising classic understandings of teachers' work. Journal of Professional Capital and Community. Santoro, D. A. (2018). Demoralized: Why teachers leave the profession they love and how they can stay. Harvard Education Press.