Staff sickness absence statistics

See the latest national statistics on teacher sickness absence, and learn how you can benchmark your school's sickness absence data with that of other schools.

Last reviewed on 8 April 2022
School types: All · School phases: All
Ref: 7670
Contents
  1. National sickness absence statistics 
  2. Individual school sickness absence statistics
  3. Benchmarking your school's data

National sickness absence statistics 

Teacher sickness absence statistics 2015/16 2016/17 2017/18 2018/19

The percentage of teachers taking sickness absence

54.5 54.8 54.4 54.0

Days sick per teacher*

4.1 4.1 4.0 4.1

Days sick per teacher taking sickness absence*

7.5 7.4 7.4 7.5
Number of teachers taking sickness absence  289,344 290,127 274,076 284,186
Total days sickness absence taken  2,158,297 2,139,864 2,025,231 2,133,253

The data is taken from this DfE table of school workforce data in England. 

To view more school workforce data, select 'browse data files' to download data or select 'create tables' to view headline data in your browser.

*The DfE clarified the difference between 'days sick per teacher' and 'days sick per teacher taking sickness absence':

  • ‘Days sick per teacher’ is the sickness absence rate averaged out across all teachers in service, irrespective of whether they took any sickness absence
  • ‘Days sick per teacher taking sickness absence’ is the average number of days sick taken by those teachers who had at least one period of sickness absence

There are no national absence statistics for support staff.

To get sickness absence data for each school