Survey of Teacher Resignations and Recruitment 2008

The annual survey of teacher resignations and recruitment is the definitive source of data on teacher turnover and recruitment, providing unique and detailed information on the numbers of teachers leaving and starting jobs, and their characteristics, such as sex, age, salary, subject, destination/origin. It was conducted by the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) on behalf of the National Employers’ Organisation for School Teachers (NEOST), together with the teacher unions and Local Government Association (LGA), and with the support of the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF).

The 2008 calendar year survey was sent to a sample of maintained primary and secondary schools in England and Wales and received responses from 1,976 schools (54 per cent of the sample). A parallel survey of sixth form colleges (of which 78 per cent responded) was conducted by the LGA.

Some of the main findings are summarised below:

• There were a total of 55,481 resignations of full- and part-time, permanent and fixed-term contract/temporary teachers from maintained primary and secondary schools in 2008. This represents a turnover rate of 11.7 per cent (compared with 11.9 per cent in 2006).
• The turnover rate of full-time permanent teachers stood at 9.7 per cent in primary schools (8.9 per cent in 2006) and 11.1 per cent in secondary schools (10.5 per cent in 2006).
• The recruitment rate of full-time permanent teachers stood at 8.2 per cent in primary schools and 11.0 per cent in secondary schools.
• Full-time permanent teachers resigning from primary and secondary schools most commonly moved to another position within the local authority sector (4.4 per cent of the teaching population). The second most common reason was retirement (2.2 per cent).
• The regions with the highest turnover rates in primary schools in 2008 were the South East (12.0 per cent), Yorkshire and the Humber (11.2 per cent), and Greater London (11.0 per cent). In the secondary sector, the highest turnover rates were in the Eastern region (14.1 per cent), Greater London (13.9 per cent), the East Midlands (12.6 per cent), and the South East (12.4 per cent). As in 2006, Wales had the lowest turnover rates in both the primary (3.0 per cent) and secondary (6.6 per cent) sectors.
• Teachers moving within the local authority sector (3.5 per cent) accounted for around a third of the overall recruitment rate (9.7 per cent) while a similar proportion were teachers taking up their first appointment (3.3 per cent).
• Gross wastage (the percentage of the whole teaching population who left the maintained sector) stood at 6.1 per cent in 2008 (compared with 5.7 per cent in 2006). A third of gross wastage was due to teachers retiring.

Survey of Teacher Resignations and Recruitment 2008 - final report (PDF, 58 pages, 688KB)

End date: February 2010

Contact: stephen.richards@lga.gov.uk

Telephone: 020 7664 3256