Question to the Department for Education:

To ask His Majesty's Government what was the total expenditure by local-authority-maintained schools and academies in England on agency supply teachers in the financial years (1) 2023–24, and (2) 2024–25.

Supply teachers perform a valuable role and the department is grateful for their important contribution to schools across the country.

Schools and local authorities are responsible for the recruitment of their supply teachers.

In the 2023/24 financial year, local authority-maintained schools spent approximately £522 million on agency supply teaching staff. In the 2023/24 academic year, academies spent approximately £898 million on agency supply teaching staff (financial returns data for academies is aligned with academic years). There is no data available for the 2024/25 academic or financial years. This data is from published school financial returns. Note that the two figures cannot be added together directly, due to the different time periods covered and the risk of double counting spend for maintained schools who convert to academy status.