A profession in wellbeing distress – new report

Physical symptoms of mental health and wellbeing distress in teachers are increasing.

This year’s Teacher Wellbeing Index has just been published by the Education Support charity.

The charity has been recording the views of those working in the education sector since 2019, and it found that the wellbeing score for 2025 is the lowest since those records began.

Some of the key findings:

76% of all staff are stressed.
49% of all staff consider their organisation’s culture has a negative effect on staff’s mental health and wellbeing.
40% of all staff say their organisations do not support employees who have mental health and wellbeing problems well.
77% of all staff experienced physical, psychological or behavioural symptoms due to their work.

It’s not all about the teaching

A major source of stress comes from having to deal with areas outside of the teaching role that staff entered the profession for. This includes:

helping students to manage their emotional responses
providing food for students when they don’t have any
signposting families to local support services (e.g. social housing)
hepign students to resolve a family conflict
buying students key school supplies.

Almost half (49%) of teachers and education staff, and 51% of senior leaders, say providing this additional help has a negative impact on their mental health and wellbeing.

How does this affect teachers?

The survey found worrying increases in the effects of stress on teachers.

A total of 50% of teachers experienced ‘insomnia or difficulty sleeping’, which is an 8% increase on last year’s figure. In addition, 41% said they had ‘difficulty concentrating’ (a 10% increase on 2024); 45% said they experienced ‘irritability or mood swings’ (a 6% increase); 36% said they experienced ‘forgetfulness’ (an 8% increase); and 37% said they experienced ‘tearfulness’ (an 8% increase).

What does all this mean?

Ultimately, elevated levels of mental health and wellbeing distress are not just causing great teachers to leave the profession but are also affecting day-to-day teaching and learning in the classroom. Nobody can perform at their best against a backdrop of constant stress and overwork – and students are not able to learn effectively in such an environment either.

The report calls for a dedicated teacher retention strategy in all UK nations, alongside a ‘whole-system reset that reconfigures the public services surrounding schools and colleges’ that will alleviate the pressure on schools and teachers to fill all the gaps that fall outside of the education profession.

This should be tackled as a priority. As these figures show, the situation for teachers looks to be worsening, which means that the task is only going to become larger with every passing year.

Read the Teacher Wellbeing Index here