Teachers are to be offered up to a year’s paid sabbatical, in a bid to improve retention rates in the profession.

In an address to more than 350 school leaders in Liverpool, education secretary Damian Hinds will announce the £5m scheme.

The scheme would allow teachers to take between a term and a year away from the classroom if they can prove that it will benefit their teaching.

Ideas for what teachers could choose to do with the time include studying or spending a year working in an industry relevant to their field.

Only teachers with 10 years’ experience would be eligible to apply for the sabbatical, which a spokesman for the Department for Education (DfE) said was intended to help reward long service.

The sabbatical scheme will form part of a package of measures designed to introducing more flexible working practices into the profession, which has been slow to implement part-time work and job shares.

Hinds will also announce a range of further proposals: “We will be introducing an enhanced offer of support for new teachers – including extending the induction period to two years – and we will work with the profession to develop a new early career content framework that will set out all the training and mentoring a teacher is entitled to in those first years.”