The Education Workforce in England: Summary Report 2026
26 March 2026
The aim of the National Foundation for Educational Research’s (NFER) annual series of reports on the education workforce in England, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, is to monitor progress towards meeting workforce supply challenges.
In 2026, we have published four reports on early years (EY) workers, school support staff, further education (FE) teachers and school teachers. Each report summarises the latest research and key trends in staff numbers, recruitment, retention, shortages, pay and working conditions and points towards policy actions that are likely to have the greatest impact on addressing the challenges.
The Education Workforce in England 2026 Summary Report brings together the findings from all four reports to give an overview of the education workforce we have analysed. It seeks to deepen our understanding of the education workforce in England by identifying shared challenges, pointing to common causes where they exist, and discussing possible solutions. It does this by comparing the evidence we have collected across the four reports.
While acknowledging that each workforce group is different and operates within its own unique context, this evidence can help us to understand where progress has been made and why and identify how similar progress might be made for other groups.
Key Findings
- There has been some progress in growing the workforce in key areas, but further to go to reach the Government’s targets
- While teacher retention and early years turnover have improved recently, the school support staff exit rate has increased
- The competitiveness of FE teacher pay has fallen rapidly in recent years
- Teacher workloads are slowly coming down but face significant headwinds, while workloads for other groups compare well to those of similar workers
- A lack of career progression opportunities is a key challenge for FE teachers, support staff and higher qualified EY workers