Rise in teacher sick leave - figures - News in brief

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More than 311,000 full and part-time teachers took sick leave in 2007, according to official Government figures.

This is a loss of almost three million working days last year.

As there are about 195 days in the school year, this is the equivalent of about 15,000 teachers being off sick each day, the Tories claimed.

Shadow children's secretary Michael Gove said the rise in the number of teachers taking sick leave was "very worrying".

The figures, taken from the Government's school workforce statistics, show that the average number of days sick per teacher has risen from 5.1 days in 1999 to 5.4 days in 2007.

The number of days lost through sickness has risen to 2.9 million from 2.5 million in 1999.

The statistics show that 311,770 teachers took sickness absence in 2007, a total of 2,907,000 days.

The highest sickness rate was in London, where 50,840 full and part-time teachers took leave.

The lowest was in the North East, with 13,360 teachers taking sickness absence.