The Office for National Statistics has produced new data on covid related deaths by occupation groups. Their comments on the teaching profession are reproduced below. They cover the period between 9^th March and 28^th December 2020:

Deaths involving COVID-19 in teaching and educational professionals

Teaching and educational professionals refers to those qualified to teach in a wide range of settings from primary school through to university level education. It does not include other jobs in the teaching and educational sector such as administration.

There were 139 deaths involving the coronavirus (COVID-19) in teaching and educational professionals aged 20 to 64 years registered between 9 March and 28 December 2020 in England and Wales. For both sexes, rates of death involving COVID-19 for this group were statistically significantly  lower than the rate of death involving COVID-19 among those of the same age and sex, with 18.4 deaths per 100,000 males (66 deaths) and 9.8 deaths per 100,000 females (73 deaths), compared with 31.4 and 16.8 deaths per 100,000 in the population among males and females respectively.

Of the individual occupations, it was only possible to calculate a reliable rate for secondary education teaching professionals, who accounted for 37.4% of the total number of deaths among all teaching and educational professionals (52 deaths). With 39.2 deaths per 100,000 males (29 deaths) and 21.2 deaths per 100,000 females (23 deaths), rates of death involving COVID-19 in secondary education teaching professionals were not statistically significantly different than those of the same age and sex in the wider population.

ONS also compared the teaching occupations with all other professional occupations, allowing ONS to see how the deaths compare with professions with similar broad economic and educational backgrounds.

ONS found that rates of death involving COVID-19 in all teaching and educational professionals were not statistically significantly different to the rates seen in professional occupations (17.6 deaths per 100,000 males; 12.8 deaths per 100,000 females) as a whole, true for both sexes.

Of the specific teaching and education professions, the rate of death involving COVID-19 in male secondary education teaching professionals was statistically significantly higher than the rate of death involving COVID-19 in professional occupations in men of the same age.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/causesofdeath/bulletins/coronaviruscovid19relateddeathsbyoccupationenglandandwales/deathsregisteredbetween9marchand28december2020

The previous ONS data on teacher deaths due to the pandemic was reported by this blog on the 11^th May 2020 in a post entitled ‘Give us the data’.

The ONS data file also identifies in the occupational tables that there had been recorded 42 deaths of teaching assistants; 12 deaths of nursery nurses and four school secretaries.

As in May, male secondary classroom teachers seem to be the highest risk group and to quote ONS ‘the rate of death involving COVID-19 in male secondary education teaching professionals was statistically significantly higher than the rate of death involving COVID-19 in professional occupations in men of the same age’.

Those staff in schools in the older age groups look to be more at risk, even if the risk is less than for some other occupations, and male secondary teachers in the older age groups, not in leadership positions, might benefit from working more with a school’s on-line offering than with the children still in school until they have been vaccinated.