School Workforce
Overview
The information contained in the school level files is sourced from the School
Workforce (SWF) Census which was collected in November 2013 from all publicly
funded schools in England.
SWF data is collected from local authority maintained nursery schools, primary
schools, secondary schools, special schools as well as city technology colleges,
academies (including free schools) and pupil referral units. 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
members 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
SWF Census (7 November 2013).
The national, headline figures were published in the Statistical First Release (SFR),
“School Workforce in England, November 2013” on April 10 2014 and can be found
at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/33541
3/sfr11_2014_updated_july.pdf.
If summed, the school level data published in the performance 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 for a very small number of schools, who did
not submit 2013 SWF data, were estimated from earlier 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 (school workforce statistics for these schools are
not included in the performance tables as there is no key stage
performance data related to nursery schools)
Maintained primary (included in the key stage 2 performance tables)
Primary academies (included in the key stage 2 performance tables)
Maintained secondary (included in the key stage 4 performance tables)
City technology colleges (included in the key stage 4 performance tables)
Secondary Academies (included in the Key Stage 4 Performance Tables)
 sponsor-led
 primary converter
 secondary converter
Special (included in the key stage 4 performance tables)
 maintained
 academies
 sponsor-led
 converters
Alternative Provision (school workforce statistics for these schools are
not included in the performance tables as there is no key stage
performance data related to alternative provision establishments)
 pupil referral units
 academies
 sponsor-led
 converters
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
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, leading
practitioners, teachers without
qualified teacher status, and all
school leadership group teachers
e.g. head teachers, deputy head
teachers and assistant head
Extra information
teachers.
Total number of
teaching
assistants (head
count).
The actual number of full-time
and part-time teaching assistants
in each school. This includes
higher level teaching assistants,
nursery nurses, nursery
assistants, literacy and numeracy
support staff, learning mentors
and any other non-teaching staff
regularly employed to support
teachers in the classroom.
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 (i.e.
employed by a third party).
Total number of
teachers (fulltime equivalent FTE)
The FTE numbers of teachers
employed on a contract of 28
days or more in each school.
This includes the following; all
classroom based teachers,
leading practitioners, teachers
without qualified teacher status,
and all school leadership group
teachers e.g. head teachers,
deputy head teachers and
assistant head teachers.
The 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 parttime teacher, the proportion
of the full-time hours worked
by that part-time teacher.
Total number of
teaching
assistants (FTE)
The actual number of full-time
and part-time teaching assistants
in each school. This includes
higher level teaching assistants,
nursery nurses, nursery
assistants, literacy and numeracy
support staff, learning mentors
The 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
and any other non-teaching staff
regularly employed to support
teachers in the classroom.
assistant, the proportion of
the full-time hours worked by
that part-time teaching
assistant.
Total number of
non-classroombased school
support staff
(FTE)
The FTE numbers of nonclassroom 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 (i.e.
employed by a third party).
The FTE number of support
staff in each school is
calculated by adding together
the headcount of all full-time
support staff in the school
and adding to it, for each
part-time support staff
member, the proportion of the
full-time hours worked by that
part-time support staff
member.
Pupil:teacher
ratio (PTR)
This is the ratio of the FTE
number of pupils and the FTE
number of all teachers in the
school.
The PTR calculation now
includes all qualified teachers
and those without Qualified
Teacher Status. This is a
change from previous years
to better reflect the numbers
of teaching staff in the school
and the class sizes they
manage.
Mean gross FTE
salary of all
teachers
This is the mean FTE gross
salary of all teachers with a
contract of 28 days or longer
working in the school.
This is a change from
previous years to include
part-time and teachers
without Qualified Teacher
Status which better reflects
average teacher salary.
Pupil teacher ratios (for use with schools where the PTR has been suppressed
due to the figure being unusually high).
Where a 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. 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.