Sources, definitions
and gaps.

What appears in the public library

Request summaries describe what was asked and what the recovered archive contains. A request is not a finding. Verified findings are claims checked against substantive source material. Approved numerical series retain the reported period, unit, category and definition.

The public snapshot was reviewed on 2026-09-07. It contains 112 verified findings and 161 numerical series. New material is added only after review; there is no target number of claims.

What the archive contains

4,115 files across 27 batches and 10 standalone requests. The catalogue has 794 batch entries and 10 standalone requests. 780 entries have files; 24 are metadata only. A recovered folder does not establish that a substantive response was received.

All dashboard statuses are labelled archived April 2026. They are historical dashboard labels, not a fresh assessment of whether an authority has answered. “Substantive material verified” means the request supplies at least one reviewed finding or series here.

The private coverage register records each file’s review outcome. 4,115 files have a recorded review or triage outcome, including 2754 marked extracted; 0 remain pending. Triage includes duplicate, unsuitable and unreadable files and does not mean all contents have been manually checked. An archive-wide extraction should not be inferred from these totals.

How we check a finding

Check the actual response or attachment, identify the authority and period, record a precise page or sheet/cell reference, and preserve definitions and caveats. Request wording, acknowledgements and email boilerplate do not become evidence claims. Private paths and raw correspondence stay outside public assets.

Small sensitive health-related categories are excluded from public presentation. Published suppression remains suppression. Unavailable, not-held and suppressed figures are shown explicitly; none becomes zero. Percentages need a stated denominator, and full-time equivalent staffing must not be described as a headcount.

Comparisons and official statistics

Employment type describes the post held on census day, rather than the teacher's employment contract. A permanent employee can hold a temporary post. Councils can record temporary promotions differently.

The source temporary total includes Teacher Induction Scheme (TIS) probationers. Temporary excluding TIS is calculated by subtracting the published TIS subset. The three chart categories must be permanent, temporary excluding TIS, and TIS.

Scotland includes local-authority and grant-aided schools. For 2020 to 2022, the Scotland employment-type values are the sum of those two published totals. Special schools, centrally employed teachers and ELC are outside this teaching-post dataset.

The employment census follows the named Teacher Induction Scheme cohort. Other probation routes are outside this cohort measure. Sector headcounts can overlap and do not necessarily sum to the published all-sector headcount.

Other includes teaching elsewhere, some supply work, other employment, unemployment and leaving teaching. The census cannot separate these outcomes. It is not an unemployment count.

Published unavailable, not-applicable and suppressed markers are never converted to zero. Every selected primary/secondary employment cell in the 2020 to 2025 snapshot is numeric.

Figures are an annual census snapshot, not live vacancies or an estimate of all teachers seeking permanent work.

The 2025 workbook records a minor Fife submission error of fewer than 10 FTE; the publisher assessed the effect as negligible and did not revise the published tables. This dataset retains those published values.

Special-school employment comparisons are excluded because the 2024 and 2025 council employment table totals do not reconcile with the separate national sector totals.

Council comparisons use the same official year, sector, metric and unit. FOI series are not ranked together when definitions or populations differ.

Sources and member downloads

Public citations, including WhatDoTheyKnow links, remain available without registering. Membership gives approved members access to the recovered archive and data downloads after an administrator has reviewed the application. Registration cannot make an externally published source private or prevent someone copying a figure visible on these pages.

Member download links expire shortly after being issued. Every download checks the signed-in member’s access.

Geography

The map uses locally hosted ONS December 2024 local authority boundaries, simplified for display. Island councils have labelled insets at different scales. Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2024; National Statistics data © Crown copyright and database right 2024. Open Government Licence v3.0.

Official source workbooks

• Teacher census supplementary statistics 2020 · Table 7.7, Table 8.7
• Teacher census supplementary statistics 2021 · Table 7.7, Table 8.7
• Teacher census supplementary statistics 2022 · Table 7.7, Table 8.7
• Teacher census supplementary statistics 2023 · Table 7.7, Table 8.7
• Teacher census supplementary statistics 2024 · Table 7.7, Table 8.7
• Teacher census supplementary statistics 2025 · Table 7.7, Table 8.7, Table 1.6

Contact the campaign with a source correction, including the finding title and source reference.