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A Question of Age

Is it just me, or are policemen, head teachers, and teachers getting younger?

Well, we can find out by investigating the school workforce census data, which goes back to 2010/11, on the .gov website.

School workforce in England, Reporting year 2023 - Explore education statistics - GOV.UK

This is the first time I have used the data after participating in the workforce census for many years. I was considering holding this post back for fear of coming across like a grumpy old man, but this subject appeals to a stats nerd like me, so let's do it!

As I was most recently part of this data as a head teacher, I am going to start with heads. For the purposes of this post, we are going to look at the following groups:

  • ages 25-29
  • ages 30-39
  • ages 40-49
  • ages 50-59

There is an under-25 category, but the numbers within it are, as you would suspect, very low, so we will ignore it for this exercise. I am also only going to look at heads of the following types of schools:

  • LA Maintained Primary
  • Primary Academy
  • Primary Convertor Academy

Apologies, therefore, to my secondary colleagues, but my interest as an ex-primary head is firmly in the primary field. Within these types of schools back in 2010-11, there were 7744 heads in the 50-59 bracket. This was the largest group. This is unsurprising, but the past 15 years has seen a clear shift towards heads in the 40-49 bracket, which is now the most common age for a headteacher in the UK. In 2023-24, there were 8530 heads in the 50-59 bracket, but there were 9515 in the 40-49 bracket. Throughout this time, the numbers of heads in the lowest two brackets have remained pretty constant. You can see the trends in the chart below, which I created using Google Sheets from the available data.

So, the answer to the first part of our question is most definitely yes, at least in the types of schools I looked at, head teachers are getting younger. One can assume that this is primarily due to the toll the last ten years have taken on us and that many are leaving the profession at the earliest possible opportunity. So, let's move on and look at teachers to see if there have been any major changes in their age profile over the last 15 years.

The results are less clear-cut, as you might expect for a much larger sample size. There has appeared to be a tailing off of the number of teachers aged 40-49 since the pandemic, though, potentially for the same reason as the reduction in the number of 'older' head teachers. A similar story for teachers aged 30-39 will also be on the cards in the next couple of years. The only group that is bucking this trend is the 50-59 group, which is growing, possibly to fill the gaps left by others leaving the profession.

Although not directly related to my initial question, it is concerning that the two groups with the most significant negative trends are the 24-29 and the under-25 groups. If this is not dealt with soon, there will be a real problem when the older teachers retire.

As I expected then, not good news for the teaching profession, at least in terms of primary schools. Providing more training opportunities doesn't seem to be working, so I wonder what the answer is? I suspect it is pretty simple, but I will leave that to you to consider, dear reader.



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