Supply Teaching – The true cost to Education

‘Schools spending £1.3bn on supply teachers as staff shortage intensifies’

Recently the Guardian newspaper published an article on the growing cost of school’s employing supply teachers, (see hyperlink) within the UK Education system. The article highlighted these shocking facts:

‘Official government figures published last week shows spending on supply teachers – who are called in to cover in the absence of a member of staff – has gone up by almost £300m over two years, with the average amount spent by academies and free schools rising by 42% in a single year’

“As a result, half of all schools had unfilled positions at the start of this year and are being forced to turn to unqualified staff, temporary supply teachers, non-specialists and larger class sizes to try to plug the gaps.

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/dec/14/schools-spending-billions-supply-teachers-staff-shortage-labour-analysis

The Government & Its juxtaposition – the story of Two Ministers:

This is even more shocking when you consider the Government’s policies on Education compared with Health-care.

Let us begin with Jeremy Hunt.

Earlier this year when speaking about Supply Agencies in the NHS he stated:

‘The government has announced measures to clamp down on “rip-off” staffing agencies used by the NHS to plug gaps in nursing and doctor rotas. It will set a maximum hourly rate for temps and cap the amount trusts that are struggling financially can spend.

Now in fairness Ms. Morgan was unfortunate to inherit the role from the most  disliked Education Minister in living memory, Michael Gove, who did more to unite teachers from all the various teaching unions against his policies in 5 years that all previous Education Ministers could not so in the last 100 years.

However Nicky Morgan, when talking about Teaching as a profession and the teaching recruitment shortage, which is being plugged by Supply Teachers and Supply Agencies, had this to say:

“Teaching is a hugely popular career with more teachers in England’s classrooms than ever before and record levels of top graduates entering the profession.

“The quality of teachers in England’s schools is at an all-time high and there are now more teachers in the classroom than ever before … 

“We are reducing unnecessary workload for teachers, we have protected the schools budget and we have given heads the freedom to pay good teachers more.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/teacher-supply-agencies-searching-as-far-as-canada-and-singapore-to-plug-staffing-gaps-10408272.html

By stating this Ms. Morgan is refusing to even acknowledge there is a Teaching shortage and this shortage is being exploited by Supply Agencies.

Which Brings us to the true cost of Supply Teaching in our schools:

•  The cost to schools budgets to cover supply teaching has increased by £300m to £1.3b
• Supply Teachers pay is falling from on average of £110 – £130 per day to £80 – £90 per day in the last 3 years.
• Supply Agencies are posting record profits
• More Supply Teachers are highlighting that they are struggling to find work, or survive on the levels of pay & are forced to visit Food Banks.

So who are winning & who are losing?

The Winners:

One such Supply Agency enjoyed a turnover of more than £22m for the year to July 2000, the last period for which accounts are available.

The company’s pre-tax profit was £74,815, but the accounts reveal that the three directors, Teresa Seabourne and Ian Penman – who are a married couple – and Christopher King, shared £1.8m in pay and pension contributions.

Ms Seabourne, the managing director, earned £454,000, slightly down on her previous year’s pay of £536,000. But the drop was compensated by the increase in her pension contributions, from £60,000 in 1999 to £255,000 in 2000.

The Losers:

Sadly over the next 3 to 4 years unless there is regulation to the Teaching Supply Agencies market I can only see the levels of monies Supply Agencies taking from School’s budgets increasing, the levels of qualified teachers leaving the profession also increasing and the standard of teaching that our children receive dropping.

• How has it come to this?
• How have we let it come to this?

Now never more urgently than ever before we need to defend our profession from these ‘rip off agencies’ and from this Government.