Data set from Teacher and leader development: ECTE and NPQs

Golden thread 2025-26

Latest data

Published 9 July 2026

Last updated 9 July 2026

Cumulative counts and percentages of the SWC teaching workforce participating in the Golden Thread (ECTE induction, ECTE mentor training, NPQs), with breakdowns by region and local authority, as well as by school and pupil characteristics.

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Data set details

• Theme: Teachers and school workforce
• Publication: Teacher and leader development: ECTE and NPQs
• Release: Academic year 2025/26
• Number of rows: 1,039
• Geographic levels: Local authority, National, Regional
• Indicators:
  • Any ECTE participants
  • Any NPQ participants
  • ECTE mentor and NPQ overlap workforce share
• Filters:
  • Group name
• Time period: 2021/22 to 2025/26

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Data set preview

Table showing first 5 rows, from underlying data

time_period	time_identifier	geographic_level	country_code	country_name	region_code	region_name	la_name	old_la_code	new_la_code	breakdown	group_name	golden_thread_count_perc	ecte_provider_led_ect_perc	ecte_school_led_ect_perc	ecte_sl_pl_ect_perc	ecte_ect_perc	ecte_mentor_perc	ecte_total_perc	npq_any_funded_perc	npq_any_non_funded_perc	npq_any_total_perc	npq_mentor_overlap_perc	mentor_npq_overlap_swc_perc	teaching_workforce_headcount_swc	golden_thread_count	ecte_provider_led_ect	ecte_school_led_ect	ecte_sl_pl_ect	ecte_ect	ecte_mentor	ecte_total	npq_any_funded	npq_any_non_funded	npq_any_total	mentor_npq_overlap
202122	Academic year	National	E92000001	England						Overall	Overall	14.2	4.2	0.2	4.4	4.5	4.8	9.3	5.4	low	5.5	10.6	0.6	510265	72391	21542	1101	22643	22828	24680	47508	27699	154	27848	2940
202223	Academic year	National	E92000001	England						Overall	Overall	27.6	8.6	0.4	9	9.1	9.2	18.3	11.4	0.1	11.4	17.9	2	511860	141461	44243	2037	46280	46696	47103	93792	58219	296	58496	10468
202324	Academic year	National	E92000001	England						Overall	Overall	37.8	12.1	0.5	12.6	12.7	12.3	24.9	17.3	0.1	17.3	22.6	3.9	511951	193745	62021	2572	64593	65026	63196	127660	88480	378	88803	20031
202425	Academic year	National	E92000001	England						Overall	Overall	44.2	15	0.6	15.6	15.7	14.8	30.2	19.8	0.6	20.3	26.2	5.3	511952	226245	77016	3051	80067	80537	75954	154548	101493	2865	103860	27213
202526	Academic year	National	E92000001	England						Overall	Overall	49	17.7	0.7	18.4	18.5	17	34.7	21.4	0.9	22.2	29.1	6.5	511557	250649	90518	3399	93917	94492	86803	177287	109598	4522	113312	33022

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Variables in this data set

Table showing first 5 of 25 variables

Variable name	Variable description
ecte_ect	ECTE participants
ecte_ect_perc	ECTE workforce share
ecte_mentor	ECTE mentors
ecte_mentor_perc	ECTE mentor workforce share
ecte_provider_led_ect	Provider-led ECTE participants

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Footnotes

1. The breakdown for academies also includes free schools.
2. The 'Other' category includes all-through schools covering nursery, primary, and secondary levels.
3. The ‘Other types’ category includes city technology colleges, further education establishments, sixth form centres, special post-16 institutions and universities. It also includes non-maintained special schools and some independent special schools eligible for funding under Section 41 of the Children and Families Act 2014.
4. The appearance of 'low' in the table denotes that the data has rounded to 0 but is not 0.
5. Pupil premium decile is a measure of disadvantage. A school is allocated funding for pupils that meet the pupil premium criteria (opens in new tab). Data is collected on the percentage of pupils within each school that qualify. In this publication we look at the decile split of schools in terms of this pupil premium percentage.
6. NPQ starts in international schools are not included. See the methodology note for more detail.
7. Teachers can participate in multiple components of golden thread CPD. They are only counted once in the cumulative workforce measure.
8. For each year, participation and workforce share is calculated cumulatively. This counts all teachers who have started each programme in the current or any previous year (from 2021/22 onwards) and are present in the workforce in the given year.

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Contact us

If you have a specific enquiry about Golden thread 2025-26 statistics and data:

Continuous Professional Development (CPD) Analysis Team

Email: Jay.KHAMIS@EDUCATION.GOV.UK
Contact name: Mr Jay Khamis

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