Support staff (headcount) in maintained schools by disability status and sector

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Next update expected:July 2026

Updates

27th January 2026
Dataset first published.

Main information

Designation
Official statistics
Data provider
Welsh Government
Data source
School Workforce Annual Census (SWAC)
Time period covered
September 2019 to August 2025

Overview

Summary of dataset and variables

The data covers different aspects of the school workforce in Wales, using the data collected from the School Workforce Annual Census (SWAC). This dataset shows the number of support staff in local authority maintained schools in Wales, broken down by disability and sector.

Data collection or calculation

School's data are derived from the School Workforce Annual Census (SWAC) returns in November each year. As SWAC is an individual level collection there may be instances where a workforce member is recorded against multiple roles within the same school or in multiple schools. For staff headcount, as part of the linking and aggregation process, those support staff with more than one role (e.g. working part-time in two schools) have their information combined into one record for each local authority they appear in, recorded against the highest grade for that individual.

For Wales level headcount, the same rationale is applied where a workforce member with more than one role (e.g. working part-time in two schools) but in different local authorities have their information combined into one record, recorded against the highest grade for the individual. For this reason, where information is published by local authority the sum of local authorities may not equal to the Wales figure published.

Updated guidance for categorising schools according to Welsh medium provision was published in December 2021. The new arrangements for categorising schools according to Welsh medium provision were introduced to help local authorities and schools to plan their Welsh medium education to support the Curriculum for Wales as well as the national goal of one million Welsh speakers, as set out in Cymraeg 2050. Published data from 2024/25 onwards uses the new categorisation system replacing the old Welsh Medium Type that is published for academic years up to 2023/24. The data is not directly comparable between the two categorisation systems.

Statistical quality

The information collected between 2019 and 2024 have not undergone a formal final validation period. However, various stages of automated validation and sense-checking are built into the process to ensure a high quality of data to inform policy making.

In 2019, there were 4 schools out of 1,502 (99.7% return rate) that did not submit a SWAC school return. For these schools the total number of staff was estimated using a scaling factor derived by comparing staff headcount numbers returned in SWAC and the Pupil Level Annual School Census (PLASC) by schools with similar characteristics within the same local authority. The estimated figures for the missing schools have been recorded as ‘unknown’ for breakdowns by specific characteristics (e.g. sex, age).

Due to changes to calculation of headcounts for 2020, figures for 2019 are not directly comparable to future years figures. See our 'School Workforce Census Results' statistical release and accompanying ‘School Workforce Annual Census: Background Information’ for further detail.

Rounding applied

c note code = numbers greater than zero but less than five. Support staff numbers have been rounded to the nearest 5.

Related reports

Published by

Organisation
Welsh Government
Contact email
educationworkforcedata@gov.wales