Further education (FE) workforce data collection

Last year we launched the FE workforce data collection to:

• provide a better understanding of the implications of government policy reforms and their impact on the composition of staff and their specialisms, for example the impact of the introduction of T Levels
• provide a greater understanding of pay in the sector, such as the impact of pay on staff recruitment, gender pay gap, underfunding in the sector compared with other education sectors
• reveal skills gaps in the sector and model skills gaps and their impacts.

In its first year, participation in the collection was voluntary, but from September 2022, submitting a return is mandatory for all eligible providers. This collection will allow us to build reliable data sets to help design effective and impactful policy to support the sector going forwards.

We will be publishing outcomes in spring 2023, for the benefit of providers and key stakeholders, such as Ofsted and sector representatives.

The collection for the 2021 to 2022 academic year will open on 12 September 2022 and will close on 25 November 2022.

There are a few changes for this year:

• we will collect a Sub Role under the existing Senior Leader, Manager, Teacher, Support and Administration Roles for each staff member
• a new data item to capture whether the staff member had a pay rise during the 2021 to 2022 academic year.
• a new data item to capture whether the staff member has benefitted from participating in DfE programmes during the 2021 to 2022 academic year.

Revised documents have been published on GOV.UK:

• FE workforce staff record specification 2021 to 2022
• Schema for the FE workforce data collection
• Example of staff data

Other documents that require updating will be published later.