A panel study of the effects of school positions and promotions on absenteeism in the teaching profession

We hypothesized that being promoted to a supervisory position leads to a reduction in subsequent absence spells and time lost in absences, and that the higher the supervisory level, the more pronounced its negative effect on subsequent absence behaviour. We tested our hypotheses by analysing the government records of 51,974 school teachers in the years 2000 and 2001. Controlling for potential confounding variables, we found that relative to rank-and-file teachers, the higher the level of the supervisory position that a teacher was promoted to, the more pronounced the year-to-year decline in either absence spells or time lost in absences. As hypothesized, for most of the supervisory positions examined, the size of their effect on absence behaviours was lower for veterans than for the newly appointed.