Teachers: Sick Leave

(asked on 24th January 2023) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many teachers in England have taken sickness absence of more than 14 days citing mental ill health or workplace stress, broken down by local authority, in each academic year since 2014-15 for which figures are available.


Answered by
Nick Gibb Portrait
Nick Gibb
This question was answered on 30th January 2023

Information on teacher sickness absence in the 2021/22 academic year will be published in June 2023.

The number of teacher working days recorded as a sickness absence as a result of mental ill health or workplace stress is not available.

The Department collects information on teacher sickness absence from all state funded schools via the School Workforce Census, held in November each year, since 2010. This does not include the reason for the sickness absence. Each census collects data for absence from the previous academic year. The latest data available covers the academic year from September 2020 to August 2021.

In the 2020/21 academic year, 229,898 (45%) of teachers took sickness absence. The total number of working days lost to sickness absence was 1,971,300. This information by Local Authority and for earlier academic years is published in the ‘School Workforce in England’ statistical publication here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/data-tables/permalink/265803f1-a60a-4f1a-8af2-08dafb06f66e.

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