Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what data his Department holds on the age of teachers in England who have left the profession in the academic years (a) 2019-20, (b) 2020-21, (c) 2021-22 and (d) 2022-23.

Recent data shows that there are now over 468,000 full time equivalent (FTE) teachers in state funded schools in England - an increase of 27,000 (6%) since 2010. This makes the highest number of FTE teachers since the School Workforce Census began in 2010.

Of the 468,400 FTE teachers in England, 22,400 were in the North East, and 63,200 were in the North West.

The Department has taken action to improve teacher workload, working with teachers and headteachers to understand and address longstanding issues around marking, planning and data management. The Department continues to work proactively with the sector to understand the drivers behind workload and wellbeing issues, and to improve policies and interventions.

The Department is supporting schools to act and remove unhelpful practice that creates unnecessary workload. The School Workload Reduction Toolkit, developed alongside head teachers, is a helpful resource for schools to review and reduce workload. Further information on the workload reduction toolkit can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/school-workload-reduction-toolkit.

The Department also worked in partnership with the education sector and mental health experts to create the Education Staff Wellbeing Charter, which the Department is encouraging schools to sign up to as a shared commitment to promote staff wellbeing. So far, 2,600 schools have signed up to the Charter. The Charter is available at: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/education-staff-wellbeing-charter.

Information on the school workforce in England, including the number of teachers joining and leaving service nationally, is published in the ‘School Workforce in England’ statistical publication, available at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-workforce-in-england. The age of teachers in England who have left the profession in the academic years 2019/20 to 2021/22 is available at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/data-tables/permalink/f886df55-bbc3-4c72-a8a1-08db7862b3a9.

Between 2019/20 and 2022/23, there was an increase of FTE teachers in the North East (from 21,723 to 22,435) and in the North West (from 61,346 to 63,247) over this period.

The table below provides the latest data for academic years 2019/20 to 2021/22 of the FTE number of qualified teachers leaving and the leaving rate, from state funded schools in the North East, North West, and England.

FTE qualified teachers leaving and entering and the leaving and entering rates¹ from state funded schools, by geography as at November 2019 to 2021 is outlined in the table below.

Source: School Workforce Census
^1: Leaving/entering rate is the number of leavers/entrants divided by the total number of qualified teachers in post in November each year

^2: For example, 2022/23 entrants are those who joined service between November 2021 and November 2022

^3: For example, 2021/22 leavers are those who left service between November 2021 and November 2022

^x: 2022/23 leavers are not available yet as they will be identified by their absence from the November 2023 census.

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 rejoin a state funded school in England at a later date.