High teacher turnover rates at England’s largest academy chains revealed

Teachers working in some of England’s largest academy chains are leaving their jobs at twice the rate of their counterparts in non-academy schools, while academies are spending less in the classroom than local authority maintained schools, an investigation I have carried out for the Campaign for State Education (CASE) reveals today.

In primary schools, more than 30 per cent of teachers within three academy chains left their jobs in a single year, compared to an average of 16 per cent for local authority maintained schools across England.

And in secondaries, three chains had leaving rates – cases of a teacher departing the school - of 26 per cent or higher, compared to an average across non-academy schools of just 14.8 per cent.

The statistics, released by the Department for Education under Freedom of Information and published here for the first time on an academy-trust-by-academy-trust basis for the largest organisations, also show that one large academy chain had 22 per cent of teachers quitting its primary schools to leave state-funded education in England altogether, while for another academy trust, the corresponding figure was 20 per cent from its secondary schools.

The investigation also found, in a wider probe of official data, that academies are spending less per pupil, on average, on teaching and education support staff than their counterparts in the local authority schools sector, with academy teachers tending to be younger, less likely to be qualified and facing slightly higher class sizes.