By Vivienne Russell | 30 April 2013
The size of the school workforce in England has steadily increased since the year 2000, although teacher numbers have fallen back from their 2010 peak, the Department for Education has revealed.
In November 2012, 899,000 teachers, teaching assistants, support and auxiliary staff were employed, compared with 568,000 in spring 2000.
Teacher numbers grew steadily from 406,000 in 2000 to 448,000 in 2010. They dropped to 438,000 in November 2011, recovering to 442,000 in 2012.
The number of teaching assistants grew dramatically throughout the period from 79,000 in 2000 to 232,000, an increase of almost 300%.
Non-classroom based school support staff peaked at 162,000 in spring 2009, but numbers have since fallen back to 138,000. There were 87,000 auxiliary staff (caretakers, canteen staff) working in English schools as of November 2012, a small increase on the 84,000 recorded for 2011. There are no earlier figures available for this group.
Almost three-quarters (73.3%) of teachers are female, as are almost two-thirds (65.1%) of head teachers. More than nine in ten (92%) teaching assistants were female as were the vast majority (81.%) of support staff.
The average salary for a full-time qualified teacher working in a publicly funded school was £37,900. In general, teachers in secondary schools earned more than those in primary schools. Pay also appeared to be slightly higher for teachers working in local authority-maintained secondary schools than for those in secondary academies, at £36,100 and £35,200 respectively.
But the DfE’s statistical bulletin noted: ‘Comparisons of average salaries between maintained schools and academy schools… may be misleading as they do not account for the differing geographical distributions of these school types.’
