Teachers increasingly leaving profession, data shows

Government figures have found that the rate of secondary teachers leaving the profession has risen from 6.6 per cent in 2011 to 8.7 per cent in 2015.

The Department for Education (DfE) analysis shows that between 2011 and 2015, the overall “wastage rate” had grown in every subject at secondary level.

Wastage is in reference to those that have dropped out of the profession and teachers who have retired or died in service.

The figures are calculated by dividing the teachers who have left the profession in a given year by the total number of teachers.

The findings show that the overall wastage rate change for secondary schools had increased by one percentage point from 10.2 per cent in 2011 to 11.2 per cent in 2015.

The DfE has said this was driven by a rise in those moving to go “out of service”, which refers to qualified teachers who are not identified as teaching in either a state of primary school in the government’s annual workforce statistics, but were teaching the previous year and not claiming pension.

The proportion of teachers going out of service rose from 6.6 per cent in 2011 to 8.7 per cent in 2015.

Sciences and technology subjects have the highest wastage rates, and the humanities and PE have the lowest wastage rates.