Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate she has made of the number of teachers in (a) Enfield North constituency, (b) the London Borough of Enfield and (c) London who have left the profession in the last (i) one, (ii) two and (iii) five years.

Information on the school workforce, including the number of teachers leaving service nationally, is published in the ‘School Workforce in England’ statistical publication here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-workforce-in-england.

The table below provides the full-time equivalent (FTE) number of qualified teachers leaving, and the leaving rate, from state funded schools in the London Borough of Enfield, London (inner and outer) and England for academic years 2016/17 to 2020/21 (the latest data available). The requested figures by parliamentary constituency are not available.

Full-time equivalent (FTE) qualified teachers leaving and leaving rate¹ from state-funded schools as at November 2016 to 2020

Source: School Workforce Census

1: Leaving rate is the number of leavers divided by the total number of qualified teachers in post in November each year

2: For example, 2020/21 leavers are those who left service between November 2020 and November 2021.

Leavers are defined as qualified teachers leaving the state funded sector in England, for example due to a change of career or joining other UK education sectors and those leaving on career breaks such as maternity leave or secondments outside of the school sector. Some of these teachers may re-join a state funded school in England at a later date.

Almost 9 in 10 (87.5%) teachers who qualified in 2020 were still teaching one year after qualification, and just over two thirds (68.8%) of teachers who started teaching five years ago are still teaching.

As at November 2021 (latest data available) there were 465,500 FTE teachers working in state funded schools in England, of which 75,700 were in inner and outer London and 3,200 were in Enfield. This is an increase of 4,400 since the previous year (7,000 increase in London and 120 in Enfield).

One of the Department’s priorities is to ensure that we continue to attract, retain and develop the highly skilled teachers needed to inspire the next generation.

The Department has set out a range of measures to make teaching an increasingly attractive profession, including bursaries worth up to £27,000 and scholarships worth up to £29,000, to encourage talented trainees to key subjects such as mathematics, physics, chemistry, and computing for those starting teacher training in 2023/24.

In addition, through the Department’s Levelling Up Premium, specialist teachers in the first five years of their career will be able to receive up to £3,000 tax-free each year from 2022/23 to 2024/25.

The Department has made good progress towards raising starting salaries to £30,000, with all new teachers to earn at least £28,000 from September – an 8.9% uplift, alongside a 5% pay award for more experienced teachers and leaders.

The Department is taking action to improve teacher quality and pupil outcomes by transforming the training and support provided for teachers, and attracting more people to teaching and enabling them to succeed.

The Department will deliver 500,000 teacher training and development opportunities by 2024, giving all teachers and headteachers access to world class, evidence based training and professional development at every stage of their career.

The Department has made a pay offer to unions that was fair, reasonable, and recognised teachers’ hard work. As per the Department’s published calculations, the pay offer would also have been fully funded, and we welcome the Office for Statistics Regulation’s recognition that we have communicated this transparently.

Just last week, thousands of schools received additional funding, as part of the extra £2 billion of funding the Department is providing both this year and next. As a result, school funding will be at its highest level in history next year, as measured by the Institute for Fiscal Studies.