Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many retired teachers his Department has asked to return to school in order to ease covid-19 pressures; and how many of those teachers are aged (a) 50 to 59, (b) 60 to 69 and (c) over 70.

The department is working to support all schools to remain open for face-to-face education and every ex-teacher that comes forward to help can make a difference to pupils.

The department’s campaign aims to further bolster the many supply staff that are already working in our schools and who have been throughout the COVID-19 outbreak. The call has just begun, agencies are continuing to recruit new candidates for our schools. The department are extremely grateful to all the teachers who are responding to our call to return temporarily to the classroom.

The department does not routinely collect data on supply staff, however, we are in close contact with supply agencies to monitor the interest they receive. The findings of our initial survey of agencies were published on Wednesday 12 January and this showed that at least 585 ex-teachers registered interest (between 20 Dec 2021 and 7 January 2022) in returning to the classroom to support schools.

The department have not asked for any data on the personal characteristics, such as age, of the people who have expressed an interest.