The proportion of school and college staff (78 per cent) and senior leaders (89 per cent) reporting stress is the highest ever recorded by a support charity.
Education Support has also revealed that almost one in four school leaders (24 per cent) identify as being “acutely stressed”.
The charity has today released its seventh Teacher Wellbeing Index, which received responses from more than 3,000 staff in school and other education settings. The vast majority of respondents work in primary or secondary schools.
As well as measuring stress among the school workforce, the survey also found that almost three-quarters of respondents (73 per cent) do not believe that Ofsted inspections are fit for purpose.
And 82 per cent of senior leaders stated that inspections have a negative impact on their mental health and wellbeing.
Sinéad Mc Brearty, chief executive of Education Support, said: “These are not findings that anyone wants to see.
“Our education workforce is stressed and unhappy at work. Such high levels of burnout, overwork and loneliness will not lead to a world-class education system.
“Working in schools and colleges is unsustainably demanding, and not improved by the level of mistrust the profession has in the inspection process.”
It comes after findings published earlier this year found that more than eight in 10 teachers do not have sufficient access to a senior mental health lead in their school.
Professor Julie Waters, sister of headteacher Ruth Perry, said that the fact that 82 per cent of senior leaders stated that inspections have a negative impact on their mental health and wellbeing is a “shocking indictment of longstanding government inaction to address this important concern”.
She added that “Ofsted has lost the trust and confidence of the teaching profession” and that the “time is long overdue for a radical reform of Ofsted’s punitive, unreliable and fatally flawed school inspection system”.
Here are the main findings from Education Support’s Teacher Wellbeing Index 2023:
Ofsted inspections are not ‘fit for purpose’
Almost three-quarters (73 per cent) of staff said they thought inspections were not fit for purpose, the research found.
And 60 per cent believed that inspections do not provide a “comprehensive picture of strengths and weaknesses of schools or colleges”.
The index also revealed that more than two-thirds (71 per cent) of staff thought inspections “negatively impact their mental health and wellbeing”.
Staff stress levels are ‘highest yet recorded’
The proportion of all staff (78 per cent) and senior leaders (89 per cent) reporting stress is “the highest we have yet recorded”, Education Support said.
The figure was even higher for headteachers, at 95 per cent.
The level of staff who experienced mental health issues due to their work is similarly the highest that the charity “[has] ever seen”, at 39 per cent.
Almost one in four school leaders (24 per cent) identify as “acutely stressed”, and 36 per cent of school teachers reported experiencing burnout.
The highest stress level increase was seen among school teachers, with the figure of 78 per cent being a 6 per cent increase on the 2022 figure.
More than half (51 per cent) of staff also reported experiencing insomnia or difficulty sleeping.
Isolation and burnout together ‘particularly’ worrying
The number of school and college staff experiencing loneliness at work also “runs at twice the rate [as] in the general population”, with 17 per cent of staff feeling isolated from others often or always.
Education Support said it was “particularly concerned” about those teachers and education staff who “experience acute stress or burnout and also feel isolation from others always or often at work” (31 per cent and 23 per cent, respectively).
“Urgent work” is needed to reduce the levels of stress, burnout and loneliness across the education workforce, the report said.
The charity also noted that, while suicides are one of the biggest causes of work-related deaths each year, they are not “included in the Health and Safety Executive’s annual reporting” or in “its inspection and protection regimes”.
Education Support concluded that “this exemption should be removed if we are to take suicide in the workplace seriously” and “improve transparency for all sectors”.
Workplace culture is worsening
More than half (55 per cent) of staff said their workplace culture had a negative effect on their wellbeing, “a very significant increase” on the 2020 figure of 38 per cent.
Similarly, the proportion of staff who feel that workplace culture has a positive impact on their wellbeing has declined from 30 per cent in 2020 to 22 per cent this year.
Education Support attributed this to a variety of factors, including “the lack of capacity in wider public services”, “ongoing post-pandemic scarring”, “challenging pupil behaviour” and “the inadequacy of SEND provision”.
Inspectors’ ‘careful regard’ for staff
An Ofsted spokesperson said: “We inspect first and foremost in the interests of children - looking in depth at the quality of education and how well, and safely, schools are run.
“But we aim for all our inspections to be carried out professionally and sensitively, with careful regard for their impact on school staff.
“After every inspection, no matter the outcome, we ask schools whether they believe the inspection will help them improve. Nine out of 10 say it will. We work constructively with schools, in the best interests of their pupils.”
Ofsted’s latest post-inspection survey data shows that 83 per cent of state-funded schools that responded agreed that the benefits of their inspection outweigh any negative aspects.
Education Support said 3,004 staff completed its survey in June and July this year, from senior leaders through to support staff.
Respondents worked in a variety of settings including early years, primary schools, secondary schools, further, adult and vocational education sectors.
A Department for Education spokesperson said that the department had launched the Education Staff Wellbeing Charter “to ensure that staff wellbeing policy is integrated within schools’ culture” and “earlier this year Ofsted announced a number changes to the way it inspects school, taking into account the impact school inspections can have on teachers.”
