Latest statistics on the teacher workforce from the GTCE

last updated:02 Sep 2010

Latest findings from the General Teaching Council for England (GTCE) show that there are more registered teachers in England than ever before.

The number of teachers registered with the GTCE has risen by almost three per cent this year according to the GTCE’s annual digest of statistics.

Overseas teachers
This increase, the highest rise for five years, is partially due to the introduction of provisional registration on the Teaching Register for trainee teachers, overseas trained teachers and instructors. This is the first time that data has been produced on the number of overseas trained teachers and the country in which they qualified.Two new sections of the digest include data about these groups. Australian qualified teachers represent the largest number of provisionally registered teachers from overseas. 

Age profile
Statistics in the eighth digest also show that teachers are getting younger as the proportion of younger people qualifying to teach is gradually increasing.  According to the figures 41 per cent of newly qualified teachers (NQTs) in 2009 were under 25 – eight per cent more of the NQT population than in 2006.  Since 2006, there has been a six per cent rise in teachers aged 39 or below coupled with an 8 per cent drop in those aged 45-59.

Supply teaching
The data demonstrates that there are more newly qualified teachers in supply teaching. Of the 72 per cent who are registered and in service, 14 per cent are working in supply – up three per cent on the previous year. Reasons for this could include greater competition for employment requiring NQTs to undertake supply work in lieu of a permanent position. Overall the Teaching Register shows that about nine per cent of in service teachers are supply teachers.

Gender balance
Teaching remains a predominantly female profession and figures from the Register illustrate that one quarter of registered in-service teachers are men.  The higher proportion of these work in secondary schools, academies and further education.

The proportion of men in teaching varies significantly by phase but the figures show that male teachers make up just 12 per cent of registered primary teachers and three per cent of registered nursery school staff. Twenty-eight per cent of state primary schools in England have no registered male teachers.

Only one man under the age of 25 works in a state-run nursery in England, according to the Register.  The General Teaching Council statistics show that, across the country, there are 44 men working in state nursery schools.

Notes to editors

For a copy of the annual digest of statistics 2009-10 please call the press office on 0207 023 3959 / 3979.

The Register of teachers contains information about more than 560,000 teachers who have qualified teacher status (QTS) and are registered with the General Teaching Council for England (GTCE). The GTCE awards QTS in England.

All teachers in maintained schools and pupil referral units must register with the GTCE. Teachers in non-maintained special schools must also register, as well as teachers in most academies. Employers must check the register to make sure that their teachers are registered and do not have any relevant disciplinary orders against them.

Other teachers can choose to register – nearly 10,000 teachers in independent schools in England are registered, along with school inspectors, local authority advisers and teacher trainers. Additionally, more than 65,000 instructors, overseas-trained teachersand trainee teachers are provisionally registered with the GTCE. A person who is provisionally registered can become fully registered when they gain QTS (for example, a trainee teacher at the end of their course).

The management and publication of all informationfrom the GTCE Register is in keeping with data protection legislationand safeguards against the publication of data about individuals. The information that the GTCE is able to hold on the Register is set out in The General Teaching Council for England (Functions) Regulations 2000 as amended by subsequent regulations.


Diversity data
Diversity data encompasses data on the disability status and ethnicity ofteachers. We seek this information, on a voluntary basis, from all teachers who complete a registration application form. The principal source of diversity data since 2002 has been from newly-qualified teachers (NQTs) as they register. From September 2008, trainee teachers have also been able to provide this information as they provisionally register.

Around 90% of NQTs do provide the information, but our data on many teachers (currently 46% of registered teachers) come from the ‘auto-registration’ exercise on the GTC’s creation in 2000, which excluded diversity data. The result is that we have ethnicity data on 52% of registered teachers, principally more recently qualified teachers.

We do not therefore provide a breakdown of the whole teacher workforce by ethnicity, as the data do not yet provide a reliable indication of the ethnicity of all fully registered teachers. We can, though, provide ethnicity data for each NQT cohort since 2002: see tables 8.2 and 8.2a.

For disability, 0.3% of teachers on the Register have told us that they consider themselves to have a disability; as with ethnicity data, this figure is principally assembled from the responses of more recently qualified teachers.

We ran a pilot project in 2007-08 to ascertain how best to gather diversity data on those registered teachers for whom we do not currently hold such information, and inearly 2010 more than 60,000 teachers offered us this information in response to our request.