Providers in scope
This publication focuses on the statutory Further Education (FE) college workforce in England. This comprises General FE Colleges (including Tertiary, Specialist and Designated institutions) and Sixth Form Colleges (SFC).
Where an SFC converts to a 16 to 19 academy, they are no longer considered providers under statutory FE. The academic year after a conversion happens, all teachers are removed from statutory FE headcounts and instead categorised as academy converters. A consistent decrease in SFC headcount from 2017/18 onwards is partially due to converters.
Contracts do not contain information on the provider a teacher works at. To collect this, contracts are paired with provider information from the Get Information About Schools (GIAS) website. This is done using an employer’s Local Education Authority (LEA) code and establishment code recorded on a teachers contract, which can be used as an identifier when joining GIAS information.
In cases where a contract in TPS has an LEA code which has since changed, the current day equivalent LEA code is used when connecting to GIAS provider information. This reduces the risk of undercounting when looking back in the time series. A few additional providers which report different establishment codes to GIAS have also been identified in the dataset and included in the analysis.
Teachers in scope
Teachers are counted as ‘in service’ within an academic year if they have a valid contract within an FE college on the 1st December. We have filtered out contracts where the salary equals 0 as we understand these contracts do not represent a teacher ‘in service’.
Some deduplication is carried out where more than one teacher contract appears at the same time at the same provider.
Methodology
The methodology used to calculate each measure is explained below:
- Headcount: Counts the number of distinct teachers in service on the 1st December each academic year. Teachers at a GFEC or SFC are considered statutory FE. Headcounts are also provided for academies which used to be SFCs and have since converted. This partially explains the drop in SFC headcounts from 2017/18 onwards.
- Headcount by new, returning and continuing: Identifies a teacher’s previous years in statutory FE to understand their movement in and out of the sector; it does not measure movement in and out of individual providers. If a teacher has no previous record in the sector throughout the full time series, they are counted as new. If a teacher has had a year or more of no records but have had a previous appearance in the time series, they are counted as returners. A teacher with a record the previous year is counted as continuing their service.
- Full time equivalent (FTE) salary: Calculates median FTE salary by different splits within the statutory FE sector only.
- Salary progression: Calculates median salary for the statutory FE workforce split by their first year joining the sector and each year of service they have worked in the sector thereafter. Where a teacher has taken a gap in service, that gap is not counted. The provider type split refers to the teachers position in the given year and their total years of experience across the statutory FE sector, not within the specific provider type.
- Retention: Calculates the percentage of the workforce still in service each year after joining the selected provider type. The GFEC category only counts years spent working at a GFEC. The statutory FE and SFC categories only count teachers working in statutory FE or SFCs respectively in the first year, however all future years also count years spent at academy converters. This is to avoid underrepresenting retention rates where a Sixth Form College converts and teachers have not in fact left their role.
- Attrition: Calculates the percentage of the workforce in a given academic year in the statutory FE sector which are not seen in service in the sector the year after. A teacher is considered not in service the following year if they are not seen working in statutory FE or an academy converter. Teachers moving to academy converters are not considered leavers to avoid misleadingly high attrition rates where a Sixth Form College converts to an Academy Converter and teachers have not in fact left their role.
- Origin of new teachers: Calculates whether a new teacher in the statutory FE sector has a teaching contract anywhere else in the education sector the previous year. This is limited only to providers covered by Teacher Pension Scheme regulations. If a teacher moves from a provider which doesn’t offer the Teacher Pension Scheme, they will appear as if the teacher had joined from outside the wider education sector.
- Destination of leaving teachers: Calculates whether a teacher leaving the statutory FE sector has a teaching contract anywhere else in the education sector the next year. This is limited only to providers covered by Teacher Pension Scheme regulations. If a teacher moves to a provider which doesn’t offer the Teacher Pension Scheme, they will appear as if they had left education.