Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to reduce (a) permanent vacancies and (b) sickness absences among teachers.

Education is a devolved matter, and this response outlines relevant information for England only.

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

The Department is taking action to increase teacher recruitment and retention and reduce vacancies. The Department accepted, in full, the School Teachers’ Review Body’s recommendations for the 2023/24 pay award for teachers and head teachers, resulting in a pay award of 6.5%. This is the highest pay award for teachers in over thirty years. The Department has put in place tax free bursaries worth £27,000 and tax free scholarships worth £29,000 , to encourage talented trainees in key subjects such as mathematics, physics, chemistry and computing to apply to teacher training.

Additionally, the Department supports schools and trusts with their recruitment through Teaching Vacancies. The Department’s free vacancy listing service for state funded schools in England can be found here: https://teaching-vacancies.service.gov.uk/.

Staff wellbeing is a crucial element of our commitment to recruit and retain more teachers. The Department has published a range of resources to help schools address teacher workload issues, prioritise staff wellbeing and support schools to introduce flexible working practices.

The Department has worked in partnership with the education sector and mental health experts to develop the Education Staff Wellbeing Charter which can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/education-staff-wellbeing-charter. Building on a successful pilot, the Department is also funding the charity, Education Support, to provide professional supervision and counselling to school and college head teachers . Over 1000 head teachers have benefitted from this support so far and the Department recently announced the expansion of the programme, by doubling places for this year. School and college leaders can find support by visiting Education Support's website, which is available at: https://www.educationsupport.org.uk/get-help/help-for-your-staff/wellbeing-services/school-and-fe-leaders-service/.

The Department does not provide guidance on teachers’ sick leave. For most teachers, sick leave entitlements are set out in the Burgundy Book national agreement. This is an agreement on conditions of service between Unions and Local Authorities, facilitated by the Local Government Association, which the Department has no jurisdiction or input into. The vast majority of Local Authorities follow the terms of the Burgundy Book scheme, which is incorporated into their teachers’ contracts of employment.

All schools must ensure that they oversee the health and welfare of their staff and should have a clear sickness absence management policy. Governing bodies may find it helpful to refer to Acas’s Managing Absence guidance, available at: https://www.acas.org.uk/creating-absence-policies.

The Health and Safety Executive also provides extensive advice on managing sickness absence and returning to work, which includes a toolkit to help with absence management, which can be found here: https://www.hse.gov.uk/sicknessabsence/.