Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the level of retention rates of (a) teachers in secondary Special Educational Needs schools and (b) teaching assistants in Special Educational Needs schools.

The Department has recently published retention rates of Newly Qualified Teachers (NQTs), by school type, in the online application that accompanies the fourth Teachers Analysis Compendium: Analysis of teacher supply, retention and mobility. The compendium was published on 27 September 2018 and is available here:[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/teachers-analysis-compendium-4.

The published rates show that NQTs in special schools have slightly higher retention rates than NQTs in the wider school sector.

The information requested regarding retention rates for teaching assistants is not held centrally.

[1] Retention rates data may be selected for the following school types: primary, secondary, and special schools, but are not available for secondary special schools only (special phase retention rates provided combine data for primary and secondary special schools). The retention rates only apply to NQTs that enter service in the year after Initial Teacher Training, not all teachers.