Number of pupils per teacher in English secondary schools has risen nearly 10 per cent since 2011

Have teacher numbers really been falling while the number of pupils on roll in English schools has been climbing upwards?

There were a few reactions of incredulity last week on twitter, after a tweet by Andrew Baisley of the National Education Union made exactly this point.

“There are 3,500 fewer teachers in 2019 than there were in 2015 and 420,000 more pupils,” Baisley had written.

It is perhaps understandable that there might have been some sense of disbelief. Despite the widely-known recent budget struggles of schools across the country, might it not be more reasonable to expect that, perhaps, actually teacher numbers had grown, but just not at a rate to match the rise on children on school rolls?

But no, DfE data does indeed confirm exactly the picture as tweeted by Baisley. And a look back at the longer-term trend, covering most of the period since the Conservatives were elected in 2010, shows pupil:teacher ratios having risen substantially in the secondary sector since 2010.