ABSTRACT
A relatively straightforward sum would suggest that ill-health retirements brought on by stress cost schools at least £57 million each year. The well-travelled path to ill-health retirement from teaching is 6 months of sick leave on full pay followed by 6 months on half pay. Meanwhile the classes still have to be taught. So, for 6 months two teachers are being paid for the same job; then for a further 6 months the job costs one and a half salaries. From 1990 to 1999 a total of 45,236
teachers retired through ill health. The cost of a supply teacher is roughly £115 per day. So the simple arithmetic is: (45,236 teachers at £115 per day for half the teaching year of 190 days) + (45,236 teachers at half of £115 per day for half the teaching year). Those 45,236 teachers together cost around £750 million. And if we accept that more than 70 per cent of longterm health problems amongst teachers are psychological – see Chapter 3 – then we can conclude that the cost of stress to schools is around £57 million a year.
