Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the potential merits of extending a Northern Ireland style Substitute Teachers Register to England in respect to ensuring supply teachers are not underpaid or maltreated by their employer.

Schools, academies and local authorities are responsible for the recruitment of their supply teachers, which includes deciding whether to use private supply agencies to fill temporary posts or cover teacher absence.

A supply teacher’s pay and working conditions will depend on who employs the supply teacher.

​Supply teachers employed directly by a state maintained school or local authority must be paid in accordance with the statutory arrangements for teachers laid down in the school teachers’ pay and conditions document.

​If a supply teacher is employed by a private agency or non-maintained school, the employer can set the rate of pay and conditions of employment.

Tackling unacceptable practices and excessive supplier margins within the teacher supply market is a core part of our ‘Maximising value for pupils’ programme. As part of this, we have introduced an expectation for schools to use the new iteration of the supply teachers and temporary staffing framework when sourcing agencies, which offers a list of preferred suppliers that schools can access, all of which must be transparent with schools about the rates they charge.