FOI Ref: FOI/2021/3182
You asked
Please supply the following information for the statistics regarding the annual number of teacher suicides since 1994 nationally.
This would include all teachers and teaching assistants - secondary, primary, nursery and ideally also university lecturers.
Could you also please provide this in an excel document to make this easier for me to analyse.
Could you also please provide if possible: These same statistics regarding teacher suicides since 1994, but just for Lancashire.
We said
ONS are responsible for producing mortality statistics for England and Wales, this is driven by information collected from the death certificate at death registration. Northern Ireland Statistical Research Agency (NISRA) and National Records Scotland (NRS) are responsible for collation of their mortality statistics.
ONS have produced ad hoc analysis on Suicide by occupation, England and Wales, 2011 to 2020 registrations, these datasets provide an insight into suicides by different occupational groups.
Data on occupation is coded using the Standard Occupation Classification (SOC 2010). In all, there are 9 major groups of occupations (for example, skilled trades occupations); 25 sub-major groups (for example, skilled construction and building trades); 90 minor groups (for example, building finishing trades); and more than 350 individual occupations (for example, painters and decorators). Full lists of occupations used in the analysis are reported in the accompanying data tables, and descriptions of these can be found in ONS Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) Hierarchy. The report is structured so that it describes larger categories of occupations before moving on to describe risk in specific occupations.
There are multiple occupation groups codes attributed to professions:
- In table 2 you will find a breakdown of suicides for sub-major occupation groups by sex, Teaching and educational professionals.
- Table 3 contains suicides for minor occupation groups by sex, Teaching and educational professionals.
- If you are looking for a specific professional occupation, please look at table 4. This table contains individual annual figures for Teaching and educational professionals from row 94 onwards.
We are unable to publish suicide figures to a refined location as it would make the figures quite a bit smaller and would be a disclosure risk. If we were to aggregate these suicide deaths by occupation as we have done in table 4, as well as location, these figures would be too small to release. These figures have been produced in line with our disclosure control policy: Policy on protecting confidentiality in tables of birth and death statistics.
Therefore, we are unable to publish the data you have requested as it is considered personal information. Section 39 of the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 (SRSA) renders it an offence to disclose information held by the Statistics Board for statistical purposes that would identify an individual or a body corporate. As we are prohibited by law from publishing statistics in which individuals can be identified, we find that Section 44 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) applies. Section 44 is an absolute exemption and no consideration of the public interest test needs to be applied.
Unfortunately, we do not hold analysis from 1994 to 2010. In order to fulfil this request, we would need to create a bespoke analysis or table. Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, Public Authorities are not obligated to create information in order to respond to requests, however we may be able to create a custom output subject to legal frameworks, disclosure control, resources and agreements of costs.
Such enquiries would fall outside of the Freedom of Information regime and should be made to: Health.Data@ons.gov.uk.