Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, in the context of former teachers who have returned to support schools put since 16 December 2021, if he will publish a list of the schools in which such former teachers were working on (a) 6 January 2022 and (b) 13 January 2022; if he will set out for each of those schools in which one or more such returned former teachers were working; and how many returned teachers were working in each of those schools.

On 12 January 2022, the department published initial data from a sample of supply agencies gathered between 20 December 2021 and 7 January 2022. This showed that 485 former teachers have signed up with supply agencies, and over 100 Teach First alumni have also expressed interest in returning to the classroom.

Given the size of the sample, the true number of sign-ups since the call was launched will be larger. Full details of the data release can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/number-of-ex-teachers-joining-the-school-workforce-2021-to-2022.

The department remains in close contact with supply agencies to monitor the interest they receive to help schools during this time. We will keep the need for further data collections under review.

The department needs to balance the need for data with the burden we place on those collating it, our focus has been on the numbers signing up to agencies. Every single teacher that responds to our call can make a vital difference to children and young people by keeping them in face-to-face education.

Even if the teachers who have already come forward between 20 December and 7 January only taught one lesson each, that could support more than 12,000 pupils[1], and if they signed up for one full week, that could equate to more than 13,000 teaching hours[2].

[1] based on an average secondary class size estimate taken from the latest School Workforce Census Survey: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/school-workforce-in-england-november-2020.

[2] Teaching hours is based on average teaching time for full time teachers and middle leaders from the 2019 Teacher Workload Survey: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/teacher-workload-survey-2019.