Long gone are the days of local authority (LA) supply pools to source short- and long-term cover. However, the school supply market has evolved in recent years and is now saturated with commercial cover agencies.
As demand on LA teacher pools decreases but increases for agencies, schools are reporting staggering costs for cover. A recent research paper commissioned by the DfE states they’re having to pay almost a ‘100% mark-up’ for cover teachers. The same report found cover staff are ‘largely dissatisfied’ with their pay. These costs simply can’t be sustained, especially when nearly half (44%) of schools have had to increase their use of long-term supply teachers.
So, what can be done to reduce supply cover cost in schools?
Supply cover cost
In England, supply teachers are paid an average of:
- £136/day in primary schools
- £150/day in secondary schools
- £144/day in special schools
Yet, the average cost to the school employing the supply teacher per day sits at around:
- £218 for primary schools
- £291 for secondary schools
- £270 for special schools
With more schools needing cover, there’s more demand on supply agencies to provide teachers. As such, competition between agencies is rife. According to the DfE’s report, mark-ups on cover ‘vary considerably’, with some sitting as high as 100%.
Costs of supply teachers have rocketed recently because there has been a shortage. That's had implications for how we cover. I will now cover a class where it's just a single day or a half day.
We know that most schools (49%) use supply teachers for less than a week, but still more than a day. Yet this still adds up to the best part of £1,000 for a single week’s work for a cover teacher in primary schools – and almost £1,500 for secondaries. Why is it so unaffordable to source quality teachers to cover classes and minimise disruption to students’ learning?
Why supply teachers are in such high demand
Well, the need for supply teachers has grown across all types of school settings since the Covid-19 pandemic. Factors that contribute to the increased demand for supply cover range from staff absence (due to illness, familial responsibilities, burnout etc) to recruitment challenges, including a lack of teachers to begin with.
More schools are seeing the supply process as a means of attracting and recruiting teaching staff – or simply, using cover as a long-term strategy to fill gaps – showing the complex state of current education recruitment.
We had put a job up for a day a week to do PPA management release, but we couldn't find anybody. With the on-costs, for us it was actually almost cheaper having a long-term supply.
How schools cover absent staff internally
Out of primary, secondary, and special schools, it’s the secondaries that use supply teachers the most. They’re also more likely to need them for longer periods of time, though the length of cover has increased across all settings.
On the other hand, primaries and special schools tend to use their own staff to provide the cover when they can. That’s largely down to the specific demands of these settings and the quality of available cover – not to mention the overwhelming cost of supply, an ongoing threat to budgets across the board.
Graph: Staff used to provide internal cover for teacher absences by phase from the DfE Research Report, ‘Use of supply teachers in schools’.
The impact of supply cover cost on school budgets
Across the board, supply cover is having a massive effect on school budgets – particularly for schools that need subject and other specialist teachers, like SEND. These teachers tend to be in short supply as it is, so growing demand for them as cover staff is pushing the supply cost up.
With these fees rocketing, many school leaders are having to make difficult decisions about where to source the funds needed to pay for them from. Whether that’s staff training or development, supply costs are taking away from other key areas of teaching and non-teaching staff progression, which risks an upset of its own.
Transforming supply cover into a teacher recruitment strategy
This ongoing demand for cover brings us back to a previous point – the use of supply teachers as a means of recruitment. School leaders have reported the increased use of supply teachers on a long-term basis is down to the challenging recruitment landscape.
Simply put, they can’t find the staff to fill vacancies in their schools. So, supply staff then become more of a feasible option. (Sometimes, it’s actually more cost-effective for schools to use a cover teacher than recruit and employ someone permanently!) What’s more, many schools are beginning to see value in encouraging supply teachers who’ve performed well to apply for part- or full-time positions.
The root causes of staff absences and supply cover cost
At Every By IRIS, we’re aware of the continuous nature of teacher recruitment and retention challenges – and the impact of staff absences on schools. We’ve worked with leaders to develop our school HR software, Every HR By IRIS, to ease the pressure of managing your workforce, whether that’s giving you more visibility over the root causes of absences to streamlining the recruitment cycle.
Unfortunately, we don’t have the power to reduce the high supply cover cost that you’re currently facing. But, we do have a friendly team who can explore your supply and staff absence problems and advise on ways you can use Every HR to ease them.
Why not reach out today to learn how your school could benefit and reduce supply cover cost?
