Opinion: Policy

Government must square up to unscrupulous teaching agencies

Fixing recruitment will require government to face down some unprincipled players and support some dedicated staff on the margins

Fixing recruitment will require government to face down some unprincipled players and support some dedicated staff on the margins

5 Oct 2024, 5:00

The education sector is facing a lack of talent that has been growing for far too long. But amid the many solutions on offer, a key segment of the workforce is being overlooked, with devastating effects for them and the schools that employ them.  

The government’s plans to recruit 6,500 new teachers highlights a renewed focus on the sector. However, even if these targets are met, that would only mean that roughly one in four of our 24,059 schools would benefit from a single new staff member.

This clearly isn’t enough, and a key part of the problem is that ongoing issues go far deeper than simply adding numbers to workforces. Something more fundamental is broken in education recruitment, and we won’t fix the problem if we don’t face up to it.

Many schools and trusts have found it challenging to source skills for some time. This has led to a growing number resorting to agencies to recruit permanent and supply specialists. Sadly, some are arguably unscrupulous, charging enormous and unnecessary margins because they recognise the desperate situation these employers are in.

This crisis has lined the pockets of some of the more opportunistic firms that saw the chance to make quick money without a thought for the plight of their school and trust clients. As this situation has become more commonplace, it has created a downward spiral for already stretched education budgets. 

This isn’t just a recruitment or financial issue; it’s affected by retention too. Much of the hard work being done to bring in specialists is being offset by the number of people leaving the market.

According to recent TUC polling, two-fifths of education workers have already taken steps to leave their profession to get a job in another field, or are actively considering it. This is particularly acute among newly-qualified teachers; one-third of this group leave during the first five years of their career.

A lack of expertise in schools, and the extra demands of working in departments staffed by supply teachers with lower responsibilities are partly to blame for so many teachers choosing to leave as their own workloads spiral.

Schools and trusts are left to to the vagaries of agency costs to plug gaps, and around we go again. This clearly isn’t a sustainable situation, but what can actually be done?

This crisis has lined the pockets of some opportunistic firms

The government has rightly identified workload and wellbeing as key issues. Modern teaching is taxing, and the number of people impacted by stress is higher than any other market, including nursing.

While the role historically has largely focused on classroom activities, we all know that teachers are being asked to do more than ever before, and this is having a critical impact. Changes to Ofsted, wider accountability measures, the curriculum and even the provision of breakfast clubs will all play into this.

But in straitened times and with little prospect of short-term solutions to the challenges of rising poverty and special educational needs, the new government must not miss the opportunity to ensure budgets are better spent when it comes to staffing.

A key priority must therefore be to standardise agency costs to bring spending back into line. This will increase budgets for schools, academies and trusts and give them a fair chance of sustainably resolving their staffing problems.

There also needs to be a greater appreciation of the role played by supply teachers. A pivotal element of this is ensuring they receive access to the same training and development as their permanent counterparts.

This is particularly key when new Department for Education figures show that use of supply specialists has increased by 58 per cent since the pandemic.

We have to remember that teachers aren’t just being asked to teach anymore, and while the education skills crisis is being tackled, other methods to ease the burden on these individuals need to be considered, or the situation will only worsen.

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4 Comments

  1. Sir in a school near you.

    Supply teachers are also a victim in all of this and have been sidelined for far too long. The daily rate of pay is often woeful (they do not collect what the agency charges the school!) and being locked out of the teacher pension scheme and put to the back of the queue when it comes to CPD training opportunities that are few and far between.
    New rules need drafting around being paid to scale as a baseline minimum from the moment they step foot in school (not just after the 12 week rule) with the automatic option to join the TPS.
    Supply teaching is exhausting and physically demanding. Being on your feet all day and trying to rapidly build positive relationships with classes of 30 youve just met to get the best out of them while juggling half baked cover work and IT that often lets you down requires a skillset that is seemingly undervalued and yet completely essential to the functioning of the education sector.

  2. It is very interesting that the article is written by a CEO of The Supply Register, a CEO of one of the exploitative agencies the article is about. This agency regularly advertises jobs at rates which are at least 22% below the actual rate of the teaching role they are trying to place teachers into. Whatever happened to the agency which signed a deal with the NASUWT saying they would pay ‘90% of a teacher’s experience point’ salary?

  3. Bee Rowley

    The author of this article is the CEO of Supply Register who are one the agencies he spends this article criticising. Supply Register are currently advertising for qualified teachers to pick up long term roles at £110.00 per day which is a over £52 less per day than a newly qualified teacher would receive at main pay scale 1! The irony for him to then go on to say how Supply teachers are undervalued is ironic in the extreme. He advertises Supply Register as offering a ‘fairer deal’ for schools and staff but the reality is his charge less are because he is ripping off the supply teachers who work for him. I’m sure his margins are just as healthy as his competitors.