Hey there Teacher Tappers!
Hip hip hooray! The summer holidays are here. We hope your Out of Office is on, the alarm is off, and you are relaxing.
Prize draw holiday treat!
Not long now until the end of our prize draw. One lucky Tapper is going to win £500 towards a summer break! To enter, just tapp between 8 July 2026 and 31 July 2026, and everyone who answers questions on Teacher Tapp, will be entered into the Teacher Tapp Prize Draw. You can read the full Ts and Cs here.
The winner will be alerted by a message in the app – so be sure to check in August to see if you scooped the prize!
Teacher Tapp’s letter to Lucy Powell
At Teacher Tapp, we aim to amplify the voices of teachers. So when Lucy Powell was appointed Secretary of State for Education last week, we knew exactly what we wanted to do: find out what teachers wanted to tell her. We asked Teacher Tappers what they’d say to Lucy Powell, then turned 4,000 of their comments into a letter, complete with graphs Tappers had asked for, and delivered it to the Department for Education ourselves. You can click the image below if you would like to read the letter.
Shorts in schools
As workplace clothing becomes increasingly more casual, so too do school uniforms and the clothing worn by teachers.
Most primary school teachers in mixed-sex schools told us that both boys and girls are allowed to wear shorts (88%) a smaller number only allowed boys (7%) and just 5% didn’t allow anyone.
In secondary schools, shorts were less common, with only 37% of teachers saying they were allowed for boys and girls, most said no students could wear them (57%), and a smaller number allowed them just for boys (6%).
In primary, there has been a drop since 2024 in schools just allowing boys to wear shorts (7% DOWN from 10%). In secondary, there has been an increase in the number of teachers saying boys and girls are allowed to wear shorts (37% UP from 29%).
Teachers in shorts
Teachers, like their students, have also seen an increase in permissions to wear shorts in their dress code policies.
In 2019, only 32% of Tappers told us male teachers in their school could wear shorts. Today, that has more than doubled to 71%.
We only collected data for female teachers in 2024, when 69% told us they were allowed to wear shorts. This has also risen, and today it is 79%.
A Teacher Tapper asked…football in schools
The men’s football World Cup is over (who got Spain in their sweepstake?!), and we now look forward to the women’s World Cup next year. But when it comes to the grassroots of the sport, how many girls are playing football in school?
The number of teachers in secondary schools with a football team that girls can play on has remained stable at 81%, matching the result from last year. This is up from 72% in 2022, when it grew to 78% in 2023, and then hit 80% in 2024.
In primary, teachers reported a slightly different picture: 66% say they have a school team that girls can play on, down from 68% in 2025 and 70% in 2024. The highest report of teams for girls came in 2023, when it was 71%, up from 61% in 2022.
In short, although there has been an increase in the number of secondary teachers who say their school has teams girls can play on, the big jump in 2023 has slowed down. In primary, the same big jump was seen in 2023, but whereas secondary have held steady, primary have seen a slow but steady decline.
What about boys? The number of secondary teachers reporting that their school has a team boys can play on has remained steady: 93% in 2026 and 2025, 94% in 2024 and 2023, and 93% in 2022. However, primary teachers have reported a different pattern: 69% in 2026, down from 72% in 2025, and down from 74% in 2024. In 2023, 71% said they had teams for boys, which was down from 77% in 2022.
Playing football at break and lunch
Now, onto whether or not teachers report seeing their students playing football at break and lunch.
For girls, this is more common in primary than secondary, with 53% of primary teachers and 23% of secondary teachers saying they see girls playing football “every” or “most” days. For boys, there is no difference between primary and secondary reporting: 93% say they see boys playing football at break or lunch “every” or “most” days.
But how do these two things relate to each other? Primary teachers in schools with a team for girls to play are almost 50% more likely to say they see girls playing “most” or “every” day.
For secondary teachers, the existence of a team also makes a difference but less dramatically: 27% of secondary teachers in schools with teams for girls say they see girls playing football at break or lunch “most” or “every” day, compared to 15% of secondary teachers in schools without teams for girls.
Please suggest any questions you think we should ask: England@teachertapp.co.uk 📧
The Ups and Downs of…the ECT year
For teachers new to the classroom, there can be many times over the first few years when their preconceptions about what it is like to be a teacher are challenged. One of these “expectation vs reality ” moments could be found when we compared the answers to two questions: “What are you most looking forward to this year?” Vs “What have you enjoyed the most this year?”
⬆️ ECTs who felt building relationships was the best thing about the year were UP when compared to predictions (41% vs 27%).
⬇️ With a job as tough as teaching, you would be forgiven for thinking the long holidays are the main attraction. But the reality is that other stuff is more fun! 20% thought holidays would be the best thing, but it was true for just 9%.
↔️ The number expecting to not enjoy anything, and then who didn’t enjoy anything didn’t change – 1% both times.
Daily Reads
The most-read tip was this romantic piece from The Guardian, all about teachers marrying teachers.
There are so many great blogs out there and we love featuring them on Teacher Tapp. If you have a blog you think we should feature, then please email us at england@teachertapp.co.uk and we will check it out!
