Overview
Supply teaching is a vital part of the education system, offering flexibility for educators and continuity for schools. Yet the current system in England and Wales is failing supply teachers, schools and pupils alike. This vital report exposes how the agency-driven marketisation of supply teaching has created a fragmented, opaque and exploitative system diverting public funds away from classrooms and into corporate profits.
Key findings
A system in crisis
- Supply teaching has become a casualty of the wider recruitment and retention crisis in education.
- Supply teachers find themselves underpaid, exploited and denied access to an institutional pension scheme.
- The supply system is increasingly reliant on commercial agencies, which now serve 93 per cent of schools in England.
Public money, private profit
- In the financial year 2022-23, schools spent £1.25 billion on supply teaching, more than 80 per cent of which went to agencies.
- Agency markups often exceed 90 per cent, with supply teachers receiving as little as £110 per day, despite schools paying an average of over £200 daily for a supply teacher.
- A small number of large agencies dominate the market, reporting dramatic increases in gross profits and accounting for as much as 50 per cent of all supply agency spending in England.
Inequity and exploitation
- Supply teachers are routinely paid below national pay scales – sometimes even paid at support staff rates for teaching work – and denied access to the Teachers’ Pension Scheme (TPS).
- Finder’s fees charged by agencies – amounting to thousands of pounds – can act as a barrier to permanent employment in an era of stretched school budgets.
- Inconsistent rates of pay and insecure employment are leading to similar shortages of supply teachers as now exist for teachers in permanent employment.
Alternatives to agencies
- Non-market models exist and work: Northern Ireland and Scotland operate transparent, public systems where teachers are paid to scale and have access to the relevant institutional pension schemes.
Local authority pools, as well as multi- academy trust-led initiatives, show promise but need proper funding, regulation
and facilitation by government to avoid replicating the exploitative conditions seen under agencies.
Recommendations
To restore fairness, transparency and sustainability to supply teaching, the report calls for:
- De-marketisation of the supply system: government should phase out the dominance of commercial agencies in the supply sector. This could be achieved through investment in non-commercial operators, whether nationally managed, local authority run or employer based.
- Fair pay and pensions: the government must mandate that all supply staff are paid according to the national pay scale and have access to the TPS or other relevant pension funds, such as the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS). Doing so would prevent downward pressure on staff remuneration through wasteful agency competition.
- Publicly managed supply registers: the government should establish a national supply register with an easy-to-use online platform, which could be provided by either commercial or non-commercial operators.
- Fair funding and equitable efficiencies for schools: by reducing supply spending the government can increase funding to schools. This would help mitigate cost pressures on schools and mean that public funds are spent in the classroom rather than on supply agency profits.