Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate she has made of the number of teachers who took sickness absence in each local authority in England in 2021-2022.

Information on the number of teachers who took sickness absence in the 2021/22 academic year will be published in June 2023.

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. Each census collects data for absence from the previous academic year. The latest data available covers the academic year September 2020 to August 2021.

In the 2020/21 academic year, 229,898 (45%) of teachers took sickness absence. 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/9dc02161-51d6-41ff-2c97-08dafaf734a0.