Shortage of supply teachers detrimental to pupils, say school staff

As reported by the BBC, pupils are suffering from a shortage of supply teachers, say school staff

They say low wages and a lack of support are putting people off the job.

“I’ve not known anything like this throughout my career,” said Kelly Dicks, head of Bradley Stoke Primary in South Gloucestershire.

A government spokesperson said: “Whilst we actively work to ensure the supply of new teachers, schools currently have autonomy on how they recruit their supply staff.”

Lee Everson, a history teacher at Winterbourne Academy, said pupils’ education was suffering as schools “make do” and “improvise”.

“Sometimes getting enough staff to keep a school safe and open is a problem,” added Everson, who is also the district secretary for South Gloucestershire’s National Education Union .

Joe Birchenall, director of The Supply Room, a Bristol-based agency for supply teachers, said their wages needed to be increased in line with inflation.

“That would bring more teachers into the profession. But the budget for support staff has been cut, so teachers are having less and less support and are having to deal with more behavioural issues for less and less reward.”

Everson said the impact of the COVID pandemic had sent absence rates due to illness “sky rocketing”.

“But then you’ve got all the consequences in terms of stress on staff; people are burning out, people are struggling to meet the demands of the job and therefore you are going to see an increase in absences requiring staff.”

He explained that supply agencies took “fairly steep” commissions so supply teachers did not see a lot of the money the school paid for them.

Everson said he felt councils and academy chains should run their own supply teacher services “at a lower cost than the external agencies”.

Dave Baker, chief executive of Olympus Academy Trust, said it had been difficult to recruit since the pandemic.

“We have far fewer applicants for posts.”

He added that a lot of the staff being offered by agencies were not qualified teachers – “they are in effect cover supervisors” – which can be difficult in terms of behaviour management with the pupils.

Dicks said: “It’s really difficult. It’s a regular occurrence where I’m having to go in and teach for the day.

“I’m the only non-teaching member of staff. So if I’m in class teaching and there was an issue… there is no one available to help.”

“It’s a challenging career. [It] probably doesn’t help that it’s all over the news at the moment,” she added, referring to teachers’ strikes over pay and conditions.

Niall Bradley from The Supply Network, a professional group for supply teachers, believes the South West is the worst paying region in the country, with some teachers getting as little as £100 a day.

While there is no reliable estimate on the number of supply teachers in England, he said, assuming the pattern is the same as Wales, the number in England dropped from 88,000 in 2018 to 77,000 in 2021.

A Department for Education spokesperson said: “Whilst we actively work to ensure the supply of new teachers, schools currently have autonomy on how they recruit their supply staff, whether they contract supply teachers directly or use employment agencies.”