Mar 31

NASUWT Big Question Survey: Data Analysis and Interactive Tool

Today, the Open Data Institute (ODI) published Data on teachers’ lives during the pandemic, a new report based on our analysis of the data from the NASUWT Big Question teacher survey. Working with partners at the ODI and NASUWT, as well as the report’s lead author Miranda Voss, our role was to provide the data analysis for the project. Initially, this involved cleaning and processing the survey data from 4,490 respondents and producing an analysis tool to help draw out key findings. To strengthen the findings, we used postcodes reported in the survey to link the survey data to other public datasets, such as on deprivation. This enabled the report to explore, for example, whether teachers in deprived areas gave different answers to others. Technical details, including how we cleaned and weighted the survey data, can be found in the report appendix.

We then produced a public interactive tool to explore the survey data and prepared an aggregated survey dataset for publication as open data. These can both be accessed through the link below.

Explore the interactive tool and read the report here

The report’s findings were featured on BBC TV and radio (2:10:35).

A few interesting findings:

  • Over half of respondents were required to take on a dual teaching role: providing classroom supervision as well as remote teaching
  • On average, respondents were more concerned about their pupils’ mental health than academic ‘catch up’. Respondents in primary and special education were the most concerned about pupils’ mental health
  • 70.5% of respondents who teach in schools in the most deprived areas said that half or more of their pupils had fallen behind academically, compared with 48.2% in the least deprived areas
  • Respondents who teach in the most deprived areas were most likely to say that student engagement with remote learning was worse than face-to-face. Lack of parental support and noise or distractions were the most commonly cited reasons for this worse engagement
  • Many teachers felt unprepared for remote teaching, particularly older respondents and those in special education
  • Most respondents reported that their workload had increased significantly in the previous 12 months.

There’s so much more to draw out of the survey data so take a look at the interactive tool.

Get in touch if you’d like to hear more about this project or our other work with survey data.

About The Author

Joe joined Mime in 2019 from the British Medical Association where he led on their analysis of NHS pressures data. Previously he worked at the Wellcome Trust, in their Education team working to improve science education. He studied Economics at Cambridge and has a masters in Public Policy. Volunteering as a tutor for two London-based education charities sparked his passion for using data to improve education outcomes.