Teachers in the most disadvantaged schools outside London take nearly 50 per cent more sick leave than those working in the least disadvantaged schools, a new report has found.

And schools with a higher proportion of pupils from poorer backgrounds face additional teacher shortages and vacancies, despite extra funding and pay freedoms, according to the research published today by the Education Policy Institute (EPI).

The report, titled “Teacher shortages in England: analysis and pay options”, found that an extra 100 days are lost to sickness each year at the most disadvantaged secondary schools outside of London - which it says can be interpreted as “a leading sign of stress or workload problems”.

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Teachers in the most disadvantaged schools outside London are sick or absent on average 5.2 days per year - 49 per cent more than those working in the least disadvantaged schools (3.5 days).

“Across a secondary school of 60 teachers, that equates to about 100 extra days lost due to sickness in disadvantaged schools,” the report says.

It adds that, inside London, figures for sickness and absence are “generally lower”, and more comparable with the levels seen for less disadvantaged schools outside the capital.

The report also found that disadvantaged schools - as measured by the share of pupils eligible for free school meals - report greater difficulties in filling teaching posts.

Just over a fifth (22 per cent) of schools in the country’s most affluent areas reported vacancies or temporarily filled positions, compared with 46 per cent of those in the poorest parts of London, and 29 per cent of schools in the most disadvantaged areas outside the capital.

The report found that, at the most disadvantaged schools, teachers in shortage subjects such as maths, sciences and languages are paid £1,500 less on average than those working at schools with the lowest proportion of poorer pupils - but this can be put down to the fact that they tend to be younger and less experienced.

It also warned that disadvantaged schools will likely face greater costs from higher starting salaries, as they look to recruit more teachers.

On the basis of the findings, the report sets out several recommendations for the government, including:

• Ensure schools with large numbers of new teachers receive sufficient resources to pay for the new, higher, starting salaries. This could be achieved through changes to the national funding formula and ensuring that overall the distribution of additional funding for schools remains progressive.
• Extend retention incentives of £2,000 per year to existing early career teachers in shortage subjects. This would help keep existing early career teachers at risk of leaving, as well as new teachers.
• Double the extra payments for teaching in “challenging areas” to £2,000 per year, extend them to existing teachers and focus these on the most disadvantaged 20-25 per cent of schools. This would create an additional incentive to teach at disadvantaged schools and be better targeted than the existing approach, which can exclude schools with high proportions of poorer pupils.
• Extend pay incentives to all early career teachers in shortage subjects and double the payments for teaching in disadvantaged schools. This would likely have a high impact, while being relatively inexpensive for government, costing less than £55m. This compares with a cost of about £20m for the government’s existing scheme.

Luke Sibieta, research fellow at the EPI, said: “Starting salaries of £30,000 for teachers will play a big role in reducing overall shortages, but are unlikely to address the additional challenges faced by disadvantaged schools recruiting and retaining high-quality teachers.

”‘Levelling-up’ teacher quality is likely to require extra pay incentives to attract teachers to poorer schools. Changes to the funding formula are also likely to be needed to ensure funding remains progressive and that disadvantaged schools can afford the salary increases for new teachers.”

Paul Whiteman, general secretary of school leaders’ union NAHT, added: “This is a very worrying report. It highlights teacher shortages in exactly the places they are most needed.

“In secondary, even as secondary school pupil numbers are rising sharply. And in schools with the highest numbers of pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds - exactly the children who most need the very best teachers.”

A Department for Education spokesperson said: “There are more than 453,000 full-time equivalent teachers - over 12,000 more than in 2010 - with increasing numbers also returning to the profession.

“We recognise that some schools and areas face greater challenges with recruitment and retention than others. To tackle this we are delivering a number of targeted programmes to support teachers to join and remain in the profession in those places.

“We have also set out proposals to raise starting salaries for new teachers to £30,000 and we are pleased the Education Policy Institute recognises this could put teaching among the best paid major professions and help boost retention.”