Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many (a) Full Time Equivalent and (b) total midwifery academics there were in England in each of the last 10 years; and if she will provide an age profile of that group in (i) 2013, (ii) 2018 and (iii) at the most recent point for which figures are available.

The Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) collects and publishes statistics on the higher education (HE) workforce in their staff record.

The staff record includes the cost centre that members of the workforce are employed in. Midwifery is not identified as a separate cost centre, so the data presented here show statistics on academic staff that fall within the nursing and allied health professions[1] cost centre, which includes midwifery academics.

HESA publish academic staff data by full-person equivalent (FPE) and full-time equivalent (FTE)[2], but do not publish all requested information for England specifically so, where available, this has been set out in the tables below. The department’s analysis has been used to supplement the published data. The latest year for which HESA have published this level of detail on cost centres is 2020/21. HESA will publish data for 2021/22 on 21 February 2023.

Table 1 shows the full published time series for the UK for FPE and FTE. Table 2 shows the corresponding time series for England, with previously unpublished FPE figures produced by DfE. Table 2 data for 2012/13 and 2013/14 could not be produced in time for inclusion. Table 3 shows the age breakdowns for 2018/19 and 2020/21 for FPE in the UK (published by HESA) and England (previously unpublished). Table 3 data for 2013/14 could not be produced in time for inclusion.

Table 1: Full-person equivalent and Full-time equivalent number of nursing and allied health professions academics there were in the UK in each of the last 10 years.

Source:

¹Table 1 - HE staff by HE provider and activity standard occupational classification 2014/15 to 2020/21 | HESA

²Publications archive | HESA

Table 2: Full-person equivalent and Full-time equivalent number of nursing and allied health professions academics there were in England over the last 10 years where available.

Source:

¹Table 1 - HE staff by HE provider and activity standard occupational classification 2014/15 to 2020/21 | HESA

² DfE analysis of the HESA Staff record.

Table 3: UK and England age breakdowns of total nursing and allied health professions academics in the years 2018/19 and 2020/21 (most recent).

Source:

¹https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/staff/table-21.

² https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/publications#staff-higher-education.

³DfE analysis of the HESA Staff record.

[1] HESA changed cost centre groupings in 2012/13: for the academic year 2011/12, the relevant cost centre grouping is nursing and paramedical studies.

[2] FPE relates to the proportion of a person's time allocated to different activities, so total FPE is not a simple headcount (for example, a person working across cost centres would have a fractional FPE assigned to each). FTE relates to the proportion of working hours that a person has been contracted to work in different activities (so a part-time staff member would have lower FTEs for each activity than a than full-time staff member). See HESA for a full explanation here: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/collection/c20025/fte_vs_fpe.

[3] Cost centre is a financial concept which groups staff members to specific related cost centres. They relate to where the resources (staff) deployed to teach the student are located.

[4] Counts are based on full-person-equivalents. Individuals can hold more than one contract with a provider and each contract may involve more than one activity. Figures have been rounded to the nearest 5, in line with HESA rounding conventions. Numbers may not sum due to rounding.

[5] Staff full-time equivalent (FTE) is defined by the contract(s) of employment and is proportioned to each activity's cost centre.