The number of teachers taking time off sick because of poor wellbeing and mental health has doubled over the past three years, with a huge spike at the end of each term as stress and burnout peaks.
Despite absence recorded as sickness falling, wellbeing absences are now far more prevalent and particularly so at secondary, data from thousands of schools collated by management information system provider Arbor reveals.
It also follows an annual pattern, peaking towards the end of each term before falling after school holidays. The biggest peak each year is in June and July.
James Weatherill, Arbor’s chief executive, said the increase “is at least in part down to the normalisation of citing wellbeing as a reason for illness”.
“But even if you strip out this effect, it shows a steady upward trend that wellbeing issues are taking its toll on staff.”
This summer, the wellbeing absence rate – the number of absences per 100 qualified teachers – hit almost 1.4 in secondary schools and almost 0.8 in primary. In June 2021, both sat at around 0.2.
Healthier workforce practices?
The rise in recent years is echoed in Teacher Tapp data.
The daily pollster of thousands of teachers found those reporting having taken absence because of mental health rose from 10 per cent in 2018, to 13 per cent in 2023 and 2024.
The government’s working lives of teachers survey also found that the proportion reporting their job negatively affected their mental health rose from 56 per cent in 2022 to 63 per cent in 2023.
In the wider workforce, though, mental health has become less of a factor in sickness absence.
According to the Office for National Statistics, the proportion of sickness absence due to mental health conditions has been falling since 2020. However, current data only goes up to 2022.
The annual teacher wellbeing index report from charity Education Support found “disturbingly high rates of stress, anxiety, and burnout continue to affect education staff, exacerbated by pupil and parent behaviour, and a lack of support outside school for children and young people”.
But its chief executive, Sinéad Mc Brearty, said she would “strongly caution against seeing the increase in wellbeing days as a problem when we know there remains so many systemic and cultural drivers of chronic stress in education”.
Wellbeing days “can take an important preventative role, as staff who are struggling would ideally take time off to stop it getting worse”.
She said a preventative approach “helps staff manage their wellbeing and ultimately will cost the system and schools a lot less. For me, these numbers represent a shift to healthier workplace practices.”
‘Leaders are not ok’
However, Education Support found 78 per cent of teachers and 84 per cent of leaders reported being stressed.
The data from leaders “is deeply troubling: they are not ok,” the report said. “They are most likely to work unsustainably long hours, be unable to switch off, and experience symptoms of burnout.”
That happened to Sean Maher, headteacher of Richard Challoner school in Kingston, around five years ago.
His school was under “egregious financial pressure” due to budget cuts and unfunded pay rises, forcing redundancies. Ofsted was “just around the corner”. Maher was working “ridiculous hours”.
“It just got to a point where I was pretty exhausted. It was over Christmas, and I started to get pains in my arms and really sweating. I went to the doctors, and they said ‘you’re stressed, you’re burnt out’. And basically, I went to bed for a week.”
Maher has “had three periods now where I’ve had to take time off work because I’ve just been so run down, so stressed, so exhausted”.
“It’s got to a point where I think running the school to the standard that I want to run it to is almost an impossible job. And a lot of that is pressure that we put on ourselves as leaders. But a lot of that, it feels like the system is working against you.”
‘There’s only so much you can do’
Emily Jones left primary headship in August after 10 years in the role. She had been forced to take wellbeing leave “for the first time in my career” last spring.
Staff absences following the Covid pandemic and a lack of supply cover meant Jones and other leaders were forced to step in, sidelining other duties.
“These things become untenable. There is only so much you can do. Only so many hours in a day. But the tasks just seem to keep piling up. And for me it had an impact. I was a single mum looking after two kids…and I wasn’t spending any time with them.
“I’m just over 40. I’d got 20 years left before I retired. And I don’t think I would have reached pensionable age had I continued in the profession. Only now, coming out of the profession and doing something different, do I realise the impacts of everything that is piled on a head teacher.”
Simon Kidwell, head of Hartford Manor Primary School and Nursery in Cheshire and a former president of the NAHT, was hospitalised three years ago after “working flat out during Covid”.
He had also been suffering from insomnia and had symptoms of workplace anxiety.
Kidwell was signed off for two weeks, which was “really helpful in terms of evaluating…and I did stop doing some things after that, because I was doing too much. I stopped doing school improvement work”.
‘Everything is firefighting’
Nick Oswald, head of Great Ouseburn Community Primary School in Yorkshire, said he felt the role “has just really dramatically increased” in recent years.
“We’re in a really good place, the school is thriving, but there’s just so much pressure, all the time. Everything is firefighting.”
Ofsted came up as a factor for many leaders who spoke to Schools Week.
One told of how stress built around high staff absences and an impending inspection, but now inspectors have been and gone “I feel so much better.”
Another said their recent Ofsted inspection was “one of the worst professional experiences that I’ve had”.
“I’m conscious of all of the things that I should be doing to manage my wellbeing, but I think the ferocity of the job is like nothing I’ve known in 30 odd years.”
The Education Support report did bring some more positive news too, though.
The proportion of staff who said they considered their organisation’s culture had a negative effect on their wellbeing fell from 55 to 50 per cent.
And 27 per cent of staff now experience the culture of their organisation as “positive for their wellbeing”, up from 22 per cent last year.
Schools seek to ease pressure
School leaders spoke about how they were seeking to ease pressure on their staff. Some allow “duvet days” or for non-contact time to be completed at home.
At Burnage Academy for Boys in Manchester, no-one teaches longer than an early career teacher timetable, and staff are offered three wellbeing days a year that can be taken for any reason.
Head Karl Harrison said any increase in wellbeing absence was “probably what traditionally you would have recorded as a sickness absence you would now view as a wellbeing absence, because people are a little bit more mindful of it.”
He said leaders needed to be “open and honest” with staff when they themselves struggle.
“If I’m tired and grumpy, my team will know about it. I’m quite happy to show my weaknesses.”
Maher also openly discussed his struggles with staff and pupils because “I don’t want mental health to be taboo”.
Another leader who had had their own issues said this helped them “come from a place of compassion” when dealing with wellbeing issues among staff. “Staff need to see vulnerabilities. If you’re ill, it’s ok to be ill.”
Richard Uffendell, head of Ashton Park School in Bristol, said his school had “developed a culture where staff can ask for things”.
He said he couldn’t say if wellbeing issues had increased but “I certainly think people talk about it more”.
But schools can only do so much on their own.
Mc Brearty said: “These issues point to societal challenges beyond education that require deep thinking and creativity to address.”
