‘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.

Over the weekend I attended the ‘Black, Minority & Ethnic Teachers’ Conference in Birmingham as my role as Equality Officer for Telford & Wrekin.

Over the last few years this conference has grown in size from being a small conference to the largest ‘Special Interest Group’ conference that our union organize with over 400 delegates attending at the weekend, there is even talk of moving it to the ICC next year as 1,000 delegates could have attended if there was space/facilities.

It is now the largest BME Teachers conference in Europe!

The key theme of the weekend was summarized by the hash-tag:

#ActForRacialJustice

The keynote guest speaker was Bonnie Greer who gave an impassioned speech/talk on how society has evolved but racial equality has not kept pace. You can check out her comments and the reaction to her speech from her Twitter A/c.

Our Gen Sec: Chris Keates then spoke about how workers rights in the UK have diminished to such an extent under this Government that the UK’s rating on the International Trade Union Confederation scoring system is rated ‘3’ out of a possible ‘5’ (with 5 being the worst score a country can achieve) We are now ranked alongside Russia whereby ‘Workers Rights are regularly violated’

Which is appalling when you compare the UK against our near European neighbors such as France, Germany & Italy all scoring a ‘1’  this being a score of ‘irregular violations of workers rights’

For more reading on this visit:

http://survey.ituc-csi.org/United-Kingdom.html

Patrick Roach then completed a real time polling of delegates which reflected the level of discrimation & inequality,  Outcomes of the real time polling taken by Patrick Roach can be located  at and the findings were shocking:

http://www.nasuwt.org.uk/Whatsnew/NASUWTNews/PressReleases/NASUWT_015007

For example, the real time poll reflected:

• A third (32%) do not feel their views are listened to or welcomed, and a further 10% feel isolated and excluded at work;
• Around four-fifths (84%) don’t feel that schools and colleges treat BME pupils fairly and support them to fulfil their potential;
• In the last 12 months 73% of BME teachers said they had witnessed or been subject to racially derogatory views or behaviours from pupils, parents or colleagues;
• 7 in 10 (70%) do not feel that progress is being made in ensuring BME teachers are treated fairly when applying for jobs or promotion;
• Only 28% believe the problem of racism and racial prejudice in schools and colleges is taken more seriously than when they started their teaching career;
• 70% feel that BME people living in the UK are rarely or never treated fairly.

After lunch there were various CPD Workshops with topics ranging from:

• Key leadership Skills
• Race Well bieng & Success
• Inspections
• Meeting the duties of Fundamntal British Values

These were well delivered, informative & useful free) CPD opportunities, I attended the British Values workshop which helped me appreciate and discuss the issues when delivering this within SMSC lessons.

Overall it was a fantastic conference, which offered great networking opportunities, superb & insightful  guest speakers, excellent workshops and the even the chance to have a Guinness with the current NASUWT President Graham Dawson

who  talked to members during the social event on the Friday night regarding his year to date as President, which was enjoyable and interesting to learn of his travels & duties during his Presidency.

Here’s hoping that the energy that was visible during the whole weekend translates into

#ActForRacialJustice

Over the weekend I attended the West Midlands Regional Conference where with people from all the divisions in the West Midlands we came together and discussed & debated the motions we as a region wish to put forward to National Conference next March.

(A motion is a formal way to propose a statement outlining a proposed area of work or research or lobbying that a Division wish the Union Leadership to pursue over the next year)

It was held just outside Warwick so this meant a sharp departure on Friday after school to get to the hotel by 5pm,

and as with everything I have attended so far, the hotel/facilities the Conferences Team selected were superb, it was a first class hotel.

After checking in and meeting my colleagues from Telford & Wrekin we headed to the Reception to socialize with friends from other regions & catch up, as mentioned in previous posts I feel the networking/socializing aspects of these events are just as important and allow members a chance to catch up, it is this, plus the opportunity to bring partners & children that make the union feel so welcoming and  ‘family-like’.

My wife & children couldn’t attend this weekend, but I was speaking with a lady who had two children registered with the free crèche, who told me, when she advises the children she is off to a conference they want to immediately know if they are also attending as they LOVE the crèche. ( I have experienced similar with my two children)

A pleasant evening ensued with Key note speakers Paul Nesbitt & the General Sec. Chris Keates talking about recent developments in Education and the challenges facing both the West Midlands region and the Country in general.

This was followed by a lovely meal and disco and a great evening was had by all!

Sadly we woke up to the news of the Paris Attacks & so at the beginning of the Conference ‘Fred Brown’ our Junior Vice President, the chair of the conference called for 2 minutes silence/reflection for those sadly affected by the events in Paris.

After this we got down to Conference business, the previous night everyone got to vote on the order of when the motions were heard, the motions ranged in subject, but the most popular motions to be discussed were:

• Workload & Work Life Balance (brought by the Birmingham Association)
• The Future of Teachers Terms & Conditions of Service (Wolverhampton)
• Insidious Performance Management Practices (Solihull & Coventry)

Each motion was outlined by the proposing Division then discussed and finally voted on, with a open forum for members to discuss their opinions on the topics.

I engaged with each motion & voted as I felt after hearing others views on these topics, after lunch I put a card in to speak on a motion, these being motion 25  covering – Supply Teachers.

However I felt the motion needed amending so my Division Sec. requested an amendment requesting that…

‘Conference calls upon NASUWT to organize local training for supply teachers so that they can access such training without financial loss’

I called for this because as discussed at regional supply teacher seminars not enough Union courses are at weekends thereby forcing supply teachers to choose between working (and earning) or attending training. After speaking on this matter and hearing other views I was pleased to see this amendment passed.

I enjoyed the discussion and debate on the range of topics and voting accordingly, it is this engagement, involvement and participation I enjoy and the feeling in some small way I have contributed to the work the Union will carry forward next year and that collectively we are stronger!

One major aspect that came from the Supply Teacher Seminar in Sept & one that I spoke on at both this Seminar & at my local division level was the lack of training events for supply teachers at weekends & during holidays.

It is a basic point, but one that needs saying again & again, if supply teachers take up the Union training opportunities it means they will have to lose money and possible future work, by not being available for work at this time with their agencies. I raised this point and used the most recent NASUWT training booklet as a prime example at the Supply Teachers Seminar, for example out of 43 dates for one course in this booklet only one was run at a weekend. The argument for this was that we do not want to give up our hard fought battle for time off for union training, which is a valid argument, but does not help the ‘Special Interest’ groups like supply teachers who have more diverse needs.

The simple fact is supply teachers are being discriminated against  by the lack of weekend/holiday training events.

From the Supply Seminar in Sept, our union has reacted & put on a number of safeguarding training opportunities for supply teachers which are run at weekends.

I attended one last weekend at Rednal

It covered all the major aspects supply teachers require for Safeguarding & was an excellent course, which was accredited & certificates issued to provide evidence were major plus points.

Whilst the course was very condensed & could have been at least a full day, it is good news the Union are reacting and offering training opportunities such as these.

More please, on more diverse areas & lets have more weekend/holiday dates for all the courses in the current training booklet, but in the first instance – well done to the training dept,

If we can moan, we can also say thanks when they respond to specific requests such as these.

Billy Bragg released this song in 1987 whereby he sung about Government (Thatcher’s) attempting to cripple the Trade Union movement, the lyrics start with:

‘This government had an idea
And parliament made it law
It seems like it’s illegal
To fight for the union any more’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbddqXib814

Nearly 30 years on & another Government (the same political party) are still attacking the unions.

Question:
What has changed in 30 years?

Billy also sung about the Power in the union, in the song of the same title singing:
‘There is power in a factory, power in the land
Power in the hands of a worker
But it all amounts to nothing if together we don’t stand there is power in a union’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwbzxemJZIc

In my humble opinion there is not enough social commentary in music these days, but Billy’s message 30 years on still resonate!

I hope you enjoy a blast from the past, and if you have not heard the songs for a while or haven’t heard them before Enjoy!