Staff at Kirklees Council schools took 7,500 days off for stress last year

Jul 10 2010 Huddersfield Daily Examiner

SCHOOLS in Kirklees lost over 7,500 work days last year to stress, the Examiner can reveal.

That’s more than double the number of working days lost due to injury in local schools.

Using data obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, the Examiner can reveal school staff took 7,506 days off sick in 2009 because of stress.

That brings the total to 33,856 days missed because of stress between the end of 2009 and 2005, when stress was first recorded as a reason for absence.

Stress sick days (SSDs) peaked in 2007 with 9677.6 recorded and they have decreased over the past two years.

But the Kirklees branch of the National Union of Teachers (NUT) believes this may be the tip of the iceberg with harassed staff reluctant to record stress on their sick notes.

By comparison staff missed 3,227 school days last year because of injury across Kirklees Council’s 195 schools which employ approximately 8,000 teaching and non-teaching staff.

Last year’s greatest loser was Healey Junior Infant and Nursery School, Batley, whose 55 staff took 710 SSDs last year.

Among last year’s worst hit was Almondbury High, which suffered 548 SSDs among its 89 staff.

Shelley College, Netherhall Learning Campus, Rawthorpe, and Mount Pleasant JIN School, Lockwood, were hard hit with 384, 226 and 198 SSDs last year respectively.

But 30 schools recorded zero SSDs from 2005 to 2009, including Almondbury I&N School, Berry Brow I&N School, Grange Moor Primary School, Mirfield Free Grammar School and Wooldale Junior School.

Biggest improvers included Honley High School which recorded 870 SSDs in 2005 and 605 in 2006 compared to 85 in 2008 and 68 last year.

Howard Roberts, secretary of NUT Kirklees, says work-related stress is the main reason why teachers leave the profession early.

But the statistics are just the tip of the iceberg, says Mr Roberts, who has worked for the NUT Kirklees for 30 years.

Mr Roberts said: “The single biggest cause is stress leading to anxiety – but it’s very seriously under-reported because teachers and other people don’t want it to be on their sickness record.

“Doctors will often support them by putting other things on their sick notes.

Want to see the figures for a particular school? Click on the link on the next page to open up an alphabetical PDF table of every school in Kirklees.