Teacher Mental Health Statistics UK: 2026 Facts, Data & Key Insights

Teaching is one of the most psychologically demanding professions in the United Kingdom — and the data shows that the mental health of the UK's education workforce is in a sustained and deepening crisis. Stress levels remain extraordinarily high, wellbeing scores are at record lows, and the pattern of teachers leaving the profession due to burnout and mental ill health is intensifying a workforce supply crisis that further increases the burden on those who remain. This guide brings together data from the Teacher Wellbeing Index 2025, the Teacher Wellbeing Index 2024, the HSE, and NFER to provide the most comprehensive UK teacher mental health statistics available.

Key Facts

76% of teachers reported experiencing workplace stress in 2025 — down just 2% from 78% in 2024 (Teacher Wellbeing Index 2025)
86% of school leaders reported experiencing workplace stress in 2025 — up 2% from 84% in 2024, the highest rate recorded
2025 wellbeing scores are the worst since measurement began in 2019
The 2025 Warwick-Edinburgh wellbeing score for education staff was 43.9 — the lowest recorded
36% of school staff scored below 41 — a threshold equivalent to probable clinical depression
Teachers score 8 to 11 points below the average UK adult population on wellbeing measures
Teachers also score lower than the general UK population on life satisfaction, happiness, and sense of worthwhileness (ONS personal wellbeing measures, 2025)
2.5 million working days are lost to mental ill health in education each year (Teacher Wellbeing Index 2025)
Work-related stress, depression and anxiety account for 46% of all work-related ill health in the UK — education is among the top three hardest-hit sectors (HSE)
49% of school staff felt their organisational culture contributed negatively to their stress in 2025 — down 5 percentage points from 2024 but still affecting nearly half the workforce
School leaders report the highest levels of burnout, exhaustion, and acute stress of any group within education
Teacher mental health is directly linked to teacher supply and retention — the NFER identified staff wellbeing as a leading factor in the ongoing teacher recruitment and retention crisis

The Scale of Stress in UK Schools

The Teacher Wellbeing Index — published annually by Those Who Can in partnership with Education Support, and based on surveys of education staff across England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland — is the most authoritative ongoing dataset on teacher mental health in the UK. Its 2025 edition carries an unambiguous headline: wellbeing scores are the worst since measurement began in 2019.

In 2025, 76% of teachers reported experiencing workplace stress — a marginal improvement of 2 percentage points from 78% in 2024. For school leaders, however, the picture worsened: 86% reported experiencing stress in 2025, up from 84% in 2024. School leaders are consistently the most affected group in the entire survey, reporting the highest levels of burnout, exhaustion, and acute stress.

The long-term pattern is one of consistently elevated stress with no meaningful systemic improvement. Despite an acknowledged awareness of the problem, and despite many school leaders' genuine efforts to improve workplace culture, the structural drivers of teacher stress — workload, inadequate resourcing, responsibilities that extend far beyond classroom teaching — have not been addressed at system level.

Wellbeing Scores: Evidence of Clinical-Level Distress

The Teacher Wellbeing Index uses the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (WEMWBS) — a validated clinical instrument — to measure the mental health and wellbeing of education staff. The 2025 score of 43.9 is the lowest recorded since the index began in 2019.

36% of school staff scored below 41 — the threshold that, in validated research, correlates with probable clinical depression. This is a remarkably high proportion: more than one in three teachers and school staff are scoring in a range associated with a diagnosable mental health condition.

For context, the 2025 index also incorporated ONS personal wellbeing questions for the first time. On every dimension — life satisfaction, happiness, sense of worthwhileness, and anxiety — teachers scored worse than the average UK adult population. The gap on wellbeing measures is 8 to 11 points below the population norm.

Why Are Teachers' Mental Health So Poor?

The Teacher Wellbeing Index 2025 identifies a consistent set of structural and cultural drivers behind these figures:

Workload. The expectation that teachers carry out substantial duties beyond classroom teaching — administrative burden, safeguarding responsibilities, pastoral support, parental communication, curriculum development, and assessment — has expanded continuously. The extra-curricular demands on teachers exert a significant and increasing emotional strain.
Supporting pupils with mental health difficulties. Teachers are increasingly the first point of contact for young people experiencing mental health difficulties, self-harm, domestic abuse, and adverse childhood experiences — often with inadequate specialist support behind them. The emotional labour of absorbing and responding to student distress, repeatedly and without adequate decompression, is a significant driver of vicarious trauma and burnout in the profession.
Inadequate resource from wider public services. A significant proportion of school staff in the 2025 index said that their mental health was affected by the sense that pupils and young people are unsupported by wider public services — creating a situation where schools carry the social consequences of underfunded healthcare, social care, and family support services.
Organisational culture. 49% of school staff felt their organisational culture contributed negatively to their stress — an improvement from 54% in 2024 but still affecting nearly half the workforce. Only 28% report organisational culture having a positive effect.

The Teacher Retention Connection

The mental health crisis in teaching has a direct and significant impact on teacher supply — one of the most pressing workforce policy challenges in UK education. The NFER's Teacher Labour Market in England 2024 report identified staff wellbeing as a leading driver of both departure from the profession and difficulty recruiting. Teachers experiencing poor mental health are more likely to leave teaching — intensifying workload for those who remain and creating the vicious cycle at the heart of the supply crisis.

The Nuffield Foundation estimates that the UK will need to train more teachers than it currently does each year simply to maintain current staffing levels, let alone expand provision. Mental health is not peripheral to the supply problem — it is central to it.

Written by

This guide was produced by the team at Mental Health First Aid Course. We work with education settings across the UK to provide mental health awareness training that supports staff wellbeing and equips teachers to recognise mental health difficulties in pupils.