From this publication:

Worth, J. and Van den Brande, J. (2020) Teacher
autonomy: how does it relate to job satisfaction and
retention? Slough: NFER.

 

 

 

KEY FINDINGS

Teachers are 16 percentage points less likely
than similar professionals to report having ‘a
lot’ of influence over how they do their job

 

38 per cent of teachers say that they
have ‘a little’ or ‘no’ influence over their
professional development goals

 

Teacher autonomy is lower among early
career teachers and higher among
senior leaders

 

Teacher autonomy is strongly associated
with improved job satisfaction and a greater
intention to stay in teaching

 

Increasing teachers’ reported influence over
their professional development (PD) goals
from ‘some’ to ‘a lot’ is associated with a
nine percentage point increase in intention
to stay in teaching

The ‘other professions’ include  ‘scientists, researchers,
engineers, doctors, nurses, lawyers, librarians’ p 08.

The graphic on this page is interesting. On p 09 it is noted that “only state sector health professionals” have less autonomy than teachers.

p 11 reports that autonomy does not increase with length of experience/ age as it does in other professions.

“… in general, teachers who stay in the classroom after their first five years do not experience increased autonomy as their careers progress and are likely to only if they enter leadership roles.”

NFER found that  autonomy is significantly lower
for teachers in  School Trusts, compared
to local authority maintained schools.