Survey methodology

How surveys are created

Each weekly survey is created by the Only for Teachers editorial team. Topics are chosen based on current issues in UK education, news events affecting teachers, and suggestions submitted by the community through our Ask a Question feature.

Every survey contains exactly 5 questions. Questions are reviewed to ensure they are clear, unbiased, and relevant to the full range of UK teaching professionals - from primary to secondary, state to independent, early career to senior leadership.

Questions use a mix of formats: Likert scale ratings, multiple choice, and short free-text responses. All question formats are designed to be quick to complete and easy to understand.

Who can respond

Only for Teachers surveys are open exclusively to verified UK teaching professionals. Membership is restricted to teachers currently working in UK schools or educational institutions - including primary, secondary, further education, and special educational needs settings. We do not accept responses from student teachers, teaching assistants, or non-teaching school staff, though we may run separate surveys for these groups in future.

Each survey is live for exactly one week, opening on Monday and closing the following Sunday. Registered members are notified by email when a new survey opens. Each member can complete each survey only once - enforced at the database level to prevent duplicate submissions.

By restricting access to verified members, we ensure that all responses come from genuine UK teaching professionals. This makes our data more meaningful and relevant for school leaders, policymakers, journalists, and researchers who use our findings.

Sample sizes and representation

We report the number of respondents for each survey alongside the results. We aim to achieve a minimum of 100 responses before publishing results, though we will always publish results regardless of sample size with full transparency about participation numbers.

Our membership covers teachers across all regions of the UK, all school types, and all subject areas and year groups. We do not currently weight responses by these demographics, but we report on the composition of our membership to allow readers to interpret results in context.

We acknowledge that our sample is self-selected - members have chosen to join the platform - which may introduce some bias. We are transparent about this limitation in all published results.

How results are compiled

After a survey closes, responses are aggregated and anonymised. Individual responses are never published. Results are presented as percentages, averages, and distributions depending on the question type.

Free-text responses are reviewed manually. Representative quotes may be included in published results with all identifying information removed. No free-text response will ever be attributed to a specific individual.

Results are published on the UK Teacher Pulse Index within 7 days of a survey closing.

Data privacy

We take teacher data privacy seriously. Individual survey responses are never published or shared with third parties. All published results are aggregated - meaning only summary statistics (percentages, averages, and distributions) appear in public reports. No individual teacher can ever be identified from our published data.

We implement the following technical measures to protect data integrity and privacy:

• Each member can complete each survey only once, enforced at the database level
• All responses are timestamped and logged with metadata to detect anomalous patterns
• Survey access is restricted to authenticated members - no anonymous submissions are accepted
• We monitor for and remove duplicate accounts that attempt to game the system
• All data is stored securely with access controls limiting who can view individual responses

Members can request deletion of their account and all associated data at any time by contacting us at hello@onlyforteachers.co.uk. We retain anonymised, aggregated survey responses even after account deletion, as these form part of the historical record and cannot be traced back to any individual.

The Teacher Pulse Index

The UK Teacher Pulse Index is a cumulative record of how teachers across the UK are thinking and feeling about their profession. It is compiled from the results of all closed surveys run on the Only for Teachers platform.

The index does not attempt to create a single composite score. Instead, it presents survey-by-survey results across key themes - workload, wellbeing, pay, curriculum, leadership, and technology - allowing trends to be tracked over time.

The index is publicly accessible and free to use for journalistic, research, and policy purposes, provided that Only for Teachers UK is credited as the source and the sample size and methodology are disclosed.