Overview
The information contained in the school level files is sourced from the School Workforce Census, (SWF), which was collected in November 2010 from all publically funded schools in England.
School workforce data is collected from nursery schools, primary schools, secondary schools, city technology colleges, academies and special schools. It collects individual level data on all teachers with a contract or service level agreement of 28 days or more, as well as all teaching assistants and other non-classroom based support staff that are directly employed by the school. It does not collect data from direct grant nurseries, independent schools, non-maintained special and general hospital schools.
Information on school characteristics has been sourced from EduBase, the Department for Education’s index of educational establishments, at the date of the School Workforce Census (4 November 2010).
The national, headline figures were published in the Statistical First Release (SFR), “School Workforce in England: November 2010 (Provisional)” on April 20th 2011 and can be found at the following link:
If summed, the school level data published in the tables will not match the Local Authority or national figures published in the SFR due to a) the suppression policy applied, b) the Local Authority and national figures include a small number of centrally employed staff and c) figures from earlier data collections were added to the SFR for a small number of schools who did not submit SWF data.
A full description of the methods used in the collection of this data can be found in the PDF version of the above SFR.
Suppression Convention
Where statistics are calculated using the numbers of school staff in particular groups, e.g. classroom teachers, the percentages based on counts of 1 or 2 people have been suppressed and published as “SUPP”.
Where an indicator is a negligible amount, e.g. a percentage below 0.05%, “NA“ is published.
Coverage
The list below details the school types that are included in the file:
- Nursery – maintained
- Maintained primary
- Maintained secondary
- City Technology Colleges
- Academies
- sponsor-led
- primary converter
- secondary converter
- Special - maintained
List of the fields and their definitions
The following table provides a full list of all the school workforce census fields published for each school and shows any definitions and describes how the data is calculated.
| Indicator | Notes and definitions | Extra information |
| Total Number of Teachers (Head count). | The actual number of full-time and part-time teachers in each school employed on a contract of 28 days or more. This includes the following: all classroom based teachers, excellent teachers, advanced skilled teachers, teachers without qualified teacher status, and all school leadership group teachers e.g. head teachers, deputy head teachers and assistant head teachers | |
| Total Number of Teaching Assistants (Head count). | The actual number of full-time and part-time teaching assistants in each school. This includes all teaching assistants and also includes higher level teaching assistants and minority ethnic and special educational needs support staff. | |
| Total Number of Non Classroom-based School Support Staff (Headcount). | The actual number of full-time and part-time non-classroom based school support staff in each school. This includes administrative staff (e.g. bursars and secretaries), technicians and other support staff (e.g. matrons, medical and childcare staff and other education support). This category excludes teaching assistants and all school auxiliary staff (e.g. catering staff) and support staff not directly employed by the school, (employed by a third party). | The FTE number of Non Classroom-based School Support Staff is not available as all the data required to calculate the figure was not part of the November 2010 census. These statistics will be available from the 2011 School Workforce Census onwards. |
| Total Number of Teachers (FTE) | The full-time equivalent numbers of teachers employed on a contract of 28 days or more in each school. This includes the following; all classroom based teachers, excellent teachers, advanced skilled teachers, teachers without qualified teacher status, and all school leadership group teachers e.g. head teachers, deputy head teachers and assistant head teachers. | The full-time equivalent (FTE) number of teachers in each school is calculated by adding together the headcount of all full-time teachers in the school and adding to it, for each part-time teacher, the proportion of the full-time hours worked by that part-time teacher. |
| Total Number of Teaching Assistants (FTE) | The full-time equivalent numbers of teaching assistants in each school employed on a contract of 28 days or more. This includes all teaching assistants and also includes higher level teaching assistants and minority ethnic and special educational needs support staff. | The full-time equivalent (FTE) number of teaching assistants in each school is calculated by adding together the headcount of all full-time teaching assistants in the school and adding to it, for each part-time teaching assistant, the proportion of the full-time hours worked by that part-time teaching assistant. |
| Pupil:Teacher Ratio (FTE) | This is the ratio of the number of pupils in the school (as at January 2011 and collected by the School Census), divided by the number of full-time equivalent qualified teachers in the same school (as at November 2010 from the School Workforce Census). | The PTR calculation does not include unqualified teachers (a qualified teacher is a teacher with Qualified Teacher Status) and temporary teachers. Schools that are dependent on employing unqualified teachers or teachers on temporary contracts could end up with an unusual pupil to teacher ratio that doesn’t actually reflect the numbers of teaching staff in the school and the class sizes they manage. |
| Mean Gross Salary of Full-time Teachers | This is the mean of the gross salary including allowances for each full-time teacher. It was calculated from the scale point information provided by schools using the Schools Teachers’ Pay and Conditions Document or from the actual salary where this was provided because the teacher is not paid on those rates. |
Pupil Teacher Ratios (for use with schools where the PTR has been suppressed due to the figure being unusually high).
Where a pupil teacher ratio (PTR) of 50 or more occurs the figure has been suppressed. This threshold for suppression has been set such that only a small number of schools are suppressed. Large numbers of schools report PTRs below this threshold, suggesting that figures for those schools are reliable. It is likely that some schools who are above the threshold have mis-reported teacher information particularly on qualified teacher status.. A few schools that have been suppressed have an unusually high PTR due to exceptional local circumstances where they have had to employ large numbers of temporary or unqualified staff.
