Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many suspended (a) headteachers, (b) deputy headteachers and (c) senior leaders have entered into confidentiality agreements in each of the last five years.

The Department for Education does not hold data on the numbers of confidentiality agreements entered into by headteachers, deputy headteachers or senior leaders. This information would be held by individual school employers.

Settlement agreements, previously known as compromise agreements, are sometimes used when teachers leave a school. These agreements are voluntary and neither employer nor employees have to enter into them. Such agreements usually include a confidentiality clause, but they cannot be used to suppress information such as that relating to pupil safety or to prevent someone from making a protected disclosure under whistleblowing arrangements.