The Chief Statistician for Scotland will be issuing a set of revised data on teacher numbers in publicly funded schools in Scotland as part of the Teachers in Scotland 2009 publication next month. Statisticians are currently investigating a problem with the completeness of teacher data provided to the Scottish Government by local authorities and intend to publish revised figures for 2007 and 2008 alongside the first release of 2009 data. Work will then be progressed to review data for 2003 to 2006 and if revisions are required new figures will be published.

The problem with the data is estimated at this point to impact less than one per cent of the total teacher numbers in each of the affected years. The impact on percentage year on year change, at local authority level and on specific cohorts of the teacher workforce may be larger. While the exact number of teachers reported is always likely to be affected by a handful of missing data, the evidence at the moment indicates that the problem under investigation is restricted to probationer teachers. Additional steps have now been added to the quality assurance process to ensure that this problem does not recur.

The problem was identified while statisticians were carrying out secondary analysis of the census data. Recent improvements in the sharing of data has allowed cross matching of data from the General Teaching Council and the Scottish Public Pensions Agency with that of the Teacher Census and the specific problem appears to relate to the non-reporting by local authorities of a number of probationer teachers. From the work undertaken so far it appears that the problem occurred where probationer teachers did not enter their GTC registration number into the school management information systems and this was not picked up despite the procedures and quality assurance in place for the sharing of teacher data between local government and the Scottish Government.

Public enquiries about this revision should be addressed to:

Mal Cooke

Sample Survey and Teacher Statistics

Scottish Government

Area 1B South

Victoria Quay

EH6 6QQ Edinburgh

Tel - 0131 244 1689

e-mail school.stats@scotland.gsi.gov.uk

Media enquiries should be addressed to:

Tom Whittles 0131 244 2530

13/10/2009