Up to half of all new teachers in Australia leave the profession in the first five years and a new report identifies a possible reason: programs which encourage sending novices into the country’s most challenging schools.

An annual survey of teachers around the world highlighted teacher shortages as “one of the most pressing problems faced by current education systems”.

The report pointed to Australia – where between 30% and 50% of teachers leave the profession in the first five years – as one of the most glaring examples of how placing early-career teachers in “challenging schools” affects attrition.

Teacher retention has long been a problem for Australian schools. Australian Bureau of Statistics data consistently show that many people who hold a teaching degree do not work in education, and in 2014 a government report estimated that 20% of education graduates do not register as teachers on graduating.

In its submission to a parliamentary inquiry into the status of teaching last year, the Australian Education Union blamed job security, lack of professional autonomy and being forced to teach out-of-field for extended periods for early-career teachers leaving the profession.

Australia funds a number of programs at state and federal levels which send early-career teachers to schools in regional and remote areas, as well as areas with a lower socioeconomic status.

For example, since 2009 Australia has spent millions of dollars funding the controversial Teach for Australia program which places non-teaching graduates in regional or low socioeconomic schools.

Last year Guardian Australia revealed the Australian Capital Territory had cut ties with the program over what it said was a lack of value for money, citing retention rates as one of the main reasons.

Released by the OECD on Wednesday night in Australia, the Teachers and School Leaders as Lifelong Learners report suggested sending early-career teachers into difficult school environments could contribute to the problem.

“Several education systems have introduced financial incentives to attract teachers into schools with more challenging circumstances, with mixed results and little evidence of the effect of such measures on teacher allocation across schools,” it said.

“One solution to reduce attrition in the early years is, thus, to review how novice teachers are distributed across schools, with a view to assigning them to less challenging working environments in their first placements.”

It suggested redirecting incentives to later-career teachers, which would potentially help foster equity “as students in challenging schools would be taught by more experienced teachers”.

The report also found teaching was the first-choice career for only 58% of teachers in Australia compared with 67% across the OECD countries, and that although Australia had a higher-than-average proportion of female teachers, that was not backed up in leadership positions.

It also revealed that Australian teachers were more concerned about increasing support staff to limit administrative burden than about individual pay.