Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to protect supply teacher salaries and pensions.
Schools are free to recruit supply teachers, and most schools use supply agencies. The Department has a commercial framework which schools can use to recruit supply teachers, and 118 supply agencies have registered.
All agencies on the framework must be transparent about the fees they charge to schools and waive some additional fees.
In addition, supply teachers have a number of statutory rights, including entitlement to equal treatment as someone doing the same role and employed directly after 12 weeks, statutory entitlement to holiday pay, employment rights (such as the national minimum wages and sick pay), and access to workplace pensions.