The number of Birmingham teachers off work due to long-term illness has risen by almost a third in a year to more than 300.

A teaching union last night blamed the pressure of Ofsted inspections, the Government's results-driven agenda, initiative-fatigue and loss of teacher autonomy for piling on the stress.

However the Department for Education and Skills hit back, claiming reforms have lessened the burden on teachers.

A total of 302 school staff in Birmingham have been off work for at least 14 weeks - the period the authority classes as long-term sick.

The figure represents 1.26 per cent of the 24,000 teachers and support staff who work in the city's schools.

This time last year there were 210 teachers classed as off work due to long-term illness. More than a quarter then stated stress, anxiety or depression as their reason for sickness.

Bill Anderson, deputy general secretary of the Birmingham branch of the National Union of Teachers, claimed teachers were feeling the strain of too much Government interference.

"It is to do with the nature of the job. It is the increase in Government initiatives and the general pressure of the job which isn't now the job that they came into."

Mr Anderson said ill behaviour among pupils was another growing factor but added it was not the main reason teachers were suffering.

"More importantly, it's the fact that people are just fed up to the back teeth of being micro-managed," he said.

"The Government wants to poke its finger into every operating theatre and every school and every aspect of public service. It does this by over-regulating and over-prescribing. There is a very deep sense of people's autonomy been taking away. That is key factor in terms of satisfaction and disease. It leads to a sense of alienation."

School staff in Birmingham took an average of nearly two weeks off sick in the 12 months up to the end of March of this year - 9.038 days.

The figure represented an increase of 0.2 per cent on the previous year.

However, the figure compared favourably to the national average of 9.3 days for school employees.

It was also better than Birmingham City Council work-ers as a whole who took an average of 9.4 days off ill last year.

Public sector workers as a whole took an average 9.1 days off ill in 2004 compared to 6.4 days in the private sector, according to figures from the CBI.

Research by the DfES shows an estimated 302,300 teachers took sick leave last year in England.

Workforce reforms introduced by the Government have been designed to ease the workload on teachers. This year saw the introduction of ten per cent statutory time to plan, prepare and assess pupils' work for all teachers.

A spokeswoman for the DfES said: "Nationally, sickness levels have remained stable. We know that teaching can be a high pressure job and that is why we have taken a range of measures to clamp down on low-level disruption and give teachers guaranteed time within a school day out of the classroom to plan and prepare lessons."