DfE School workforce census November 2024, report published in June 2025.

Download workforce report 2024

Methodology:

The School Workforce Census allows the DfE to collect curriculum information from a large sample of secondary schools. Curriculum information is requested from all secondary, middle deemed secondary and all-through schools, including relevant academy schools, with the timetabling software that interfaces with their Management Information System. The information collected relates to teaching for a selected week in autumn each year. The default requirement is the week in which the Census Date falls. However, if this week or cycle was unrepresentative of the normal timetable, then the guidance specifies that another week or cycle should be chosen. If a school operates a timetable cycle covering two or more weeks an average figure, representative of one week’s teaching should have been entered. If the school timetable is structured so that an average was not readily obtainable then a figure to represent a typical week should have been entered.

Not all schools provided complete curriculum information. Where returned information on curriculum is mostly incomplete, the data for these schools has been removed from published analysis. In 2024, 2,800 secondary schools (81.0%) provided usable curriculum information.

Memorandum of Understanding

The National Association of Teachers of RE (NATRE) has been reporting on the school level data from the school workforce census for the last nine years. The Memorandum of Understanding with the DfE has allowed us to share this information to school providers, SACREs and Academy Trusts.

Specific findings:

1. There has been a decrease in the number of schools that report offering zero hours of RE in year 11 from 16.4% in 2023 to 14.4% in 2024. Whilst indicating an improvement, this equates to 1 in 6 schools are breaching their statutory duty to provide RE for all pupils in all year groups. It is worth noting that because the number of schools reporting other subject data but not RE has increased, SACREs will need to verify the levels of provision in those schools by another method. They will also need seek information from those who did not report curriculum data at all this year.
2. In 2024, more than 42% of state funded secondary schools reported offering less than 3% of curriculum time in year 11. However, this is a decrease from 46% in 2023. When this data is cross referenced with GCSE entries, it suggests that where schools report a small percentage of provision, this equates to a small GCSE option group. Again, this practice represents a breach of statutory duties because those pupils who do not opt for the GCSE course are entitled to their statutory RE. When the new Ofsted toolkit references pupil’s entitlement, NATRE hopes that more attention is drawn to this.
3. The gap between levels of provision in schools with a religious character and those without has been widening each year. More than 81.3% of schools and academies with a religious character offer more than 3% of curriculum time in year 11 for Religious Education compared to 23% of schools and academies without a religious character. This level of provision is not a big ask for a core subject of the basic curriculum. In a 30-period week this represents a meagre 45 minutes approximately each week. The time recommended to fulfil the requirements of most local agreed syllabuses is 5% i.e. about 75 minutes.