Computing workforce report
English school data 2012-2022
This report outlines statistics related to school workforce figures for computing1 teachers in England over the period 2010/11-2022/23. This period covers the lead up to the curriculum change in 2014 and the implementation of this change. Data is taken from the DfE’s school workforce census, an annual survey taken by 70-90% of English secondary schools that covers their staffing and curriculum offering for a single week in November of each year (DfE 2024).
Whilst national teacher workforce statistics are produced annually by the department for education, such data offers limited insights into statistics for computing staff. The attempt by the Royal Society (2019) to collate longitudinal data on the computing teacher workforce using open data sets is now several years out of date and fails to explore areas such as hours of computing taught per year group.
Please note that the figures here are for the actual school workforce data set, published DfE statistics increase teaching hours and staff numbers by 20-30% to compensate for missing data, i.e. the results described below are actual results correct for roughly 70-80% of the teaching workforce in state secondary schools. Dotted black lines represent population level data.
1 Acronyms
- BAME: Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic
- D&T: Design and Technology, a group of timetabled subjects e.g. food technology, graphics and resistant materials.
- DfE: Department for Education
- KS3: Key Stage 3, school years 7-9, typically for students aged 11-14
- KS4: Key Stage 4, school years 10-11, typically for students aged 14-16
- KS5: Key Stage 5, school years 12-13, typically for students aged 16-18
- NPD: National Pupil Database
- SWF: School Workforce Census
References
Footnotes
Computing is used here to refer to the subject area of computing, which includes teachers of computer science and information technology.↩︎