Description
This page describes the data provided in the School Workforce in England national statistic underlying data files. This data is released under the terms of the Open Government License (opens in new tab) and is intended to meet at least 3 stars for Open Data (opens in new tab).
The methodology should be referenced alongside this data. It provides information on the data sources, their coverage and quality, as well as explaining methodology used in producing the data.
Coverage
The School Workforce in England publication provides the latest information at national and local level on the number and characteristics of teachers and support staff that work in state-funded schools in England.
The publication summarises information collected from schools and local authorities via the November School Workforce Census and links data from other sources including the Teachers’ Pensions Scheme and the Database of Qualified Teachers.
The publication and it's underlying data files provide information on:
- Teacher numbers and characteristics - a time series of teacher numbers in state-funded schools in England. There are various breakdowns of these; post held, school type and phase, gender, age, ethnicity, whether they work full/part-time and whether they have Qualified Teacher Status or not.
- Support staff numbers and characteristics - the number of teaching assistants and other school support staff employed by state-funded schools in England. This data shows the numbers by post held and has some limited characteristics data, for example post held, school type and phase, gender, age, ethnicity and whether they work full/part-time.
- Pupil teacher ratios - pupil data from the January school census is used to produce pupil teacher ratios and pupil adult ratios (teachers and all classroom-based support) for each school type/phase.
- Teacher turnover and retention - the number of qualified entrants to teaching (and whether they are new teachers or returners), their propensity to stay (retention), and the numbers of qualified teachers leaving the teaching profession (for example through retirement or leaving early).
- Teacher pay - the salaries received (in £5/10 thousand bands) for all teachers and separately for classroom teachers, leadership group teachers, and head teachers. The statistics also provide an age, gender and school type/phase breakdown. Where appropriate, average mean and median salaries are provided for comparison purposes. This information is provided for the full time series available however caution should be used when drawing comparisons over time. More information on this is available in the methodology.
- Teacher qualifications - information on the highest post-A-level qualification held by teachers (by teacher grade and school type/phase).
- Subjects taught and specialist teaching - Estimates are provided of the number of hours taught and by how many teachers, of each subject for Key Stages 3 to 5 in a typical week.
Estimates are provided of the number/percentage of teachers teaching each subject that have relevant post-A level qualifications in the subject. Similar data is produced showing the number of hours taught by teachers with relevant post-A level qualifications in the subject.
Subjects taught and specialist teaching information is based on a large sample of secondary schools providing data on their teaching in a typical week. - Teacher vacancies - the number of advertised teaching posts that were either vacant or temporarily filled at the census date in November (which is mid term). It provides subject level estimates for these posts for secondary schools only.
- Teacher sickness absence - the number of teachers that have taken sickness absence in the previous academic year and the number of days they were absent.
- Teachers' Pension Scheme and teachers out of service - the overall number of teachers who have been awarded retirement benefits from the Teachers’ Pensions Scheme after leaving teaching service in England (can include further and higher education providers). Also included are estimates of the numbers of teachers with qualified teacher status in England who have left service or who never entered service.
In most cases, underlying data files include national, regional, local authority and school level information for schools in England.
Symbols used in the underlying data files are:
x = not available - information has not been collected or there are no estimates available at this level of aggregation.
z = not applicable - statistic cannot be produced. For example where a denominator is not available to produce a percentage.
c = confidential - where presentation of data would disclose confidential information, for example being able to identify details about a single respondent, this data must be suppressed and given this marker to maintain confidentiality clauses.
u = low reliability - values of the potentially low quality, for example where values of statistical significance have been calculated.
