Teacher retention is a critical international problem threatening educational quality and stability. This article argues that the efficacy of retention strategies is fundamentally shaped by their often-implicit assumptions about the nature of teachers' work and the levers for retention. Through a critical comparative policy analysis, we contrast two distinct paradigms: England’s centralized ‘Re-ducing Teacher Workload’ policy, a top-down intervention predicated on the assumption of reten-tion as a function of quantitative task reduction, and a decentralized Dutch initiative in Amster-dam, a bottom-up strategy designed to strengthen retention by fostering professional agency and growth. Analysing both through the theoretical lenses of Self-Determination Theory and the Teacher Retention Balance Model reveals a central steering paradox. The English policy’s stand-ardized, prescriptive method systematically thwarted teacher autonomy, thereby limiting its suc-cess and contributing to persistently high attrition. Conversely, the Amsterdam approach, by align-ing its methods with core psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness, achieved statistically significant gains in job satisfaction and self-efficacy – notably without reduc-ing overall workload. However, this strengths-based model also revealed inherent challenges of de-centralized governance, which ultimately constrained its broader scalability and system-wide im-pact. We conclude that sustainable retention requires policies to be consciously designed in con-gruence with established motivational theory, while deliberately navigating the inherent con-straints and trade-offs of their specific governance contexts. Keywords: Teacher retention; self-determination theory; teacher autonomy; workload; policy analysis.

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