Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of including supply teachers in any forthcoming workforce strategy for (a) teacher recruitment and (b) teacher retention.

High quality teaching is the in school factor that has the biggest positive impact on children’s outcomes. Ensuring a high quality teaching workforce is therefore critical to the government’s mission to break down barriers to opportunity and boost life chances for every child. This is why the department will recruit 6,500 new expert teachers across secondary and special schools and colleges, get more teachers into shortage subjects, support areas that face recruitment challenges and tackle retention issues.

Supply teachers make an important contribution to the smooth running of schools by filling posts on a temporary basis and covering teacher absences.

School autonomy is vital to the health of our education system. Headteachers are ultimately responsible for employment in their schools, as they are best placed to understand the specific needs of their pupils and make staffing decisions accordingly.

The department is determined to improve the attractiveness of the teaching profession so that existing teachers want to remain in it, former teachers want to return to it, and new graduates and career changers wish to join.

We continue to incentivise teacher recruitment through increasing teacher trainee bursaries to £233 million in 2025/26, with a focus on shortage subjects, and doubling retention payments from this year. A successful recruitment strategy starts with a strong retention strategy, and we are doing more to improve wellbeing and reduce workload, including actively promoting flexible working such as allowing planning, preparation and assessment time to be taken from home.