Asked by: Ed Davey (Liberal Democrat - Kingston and Surbiton)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what support her Department has provided to local authorities to aid recruitment of teachers and temporary supply teachers.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Department is in the planning stage of a new commercial framework designed to help schools with the sourcing of supply teachers. The framework will be aimed at providing improved terms and conditions, promoting better agency conduct and offering improved pricing for schools. As part of the development of the framework we have engaged with a variety of stakeholders, including schools and local authorities. It is anticipated that the new supply teacher framework will be available in September 2018.
Asked by: Ed Davey (Liberal Democrat - Kingston and Surbiton)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the White Paper, Educational Excellence Everywhere, published in March 2016, what the timetable is for the launch of the national teacher vacancy website; and if she will make a statement.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Department is undertaking user research with head teachers, school business managers and recruitment staff as well as returning, aspiring and newly qualified teachers, to strengthen its understanding of the issues schools face when advertising teacher vacancies and the challenges teachers have finding and applying for jobs. The Department is using this information in the development and design of a new national teacher vacancy service. We are currently at an early stage of prototyping the new service and testing, to ensure the service meets the needs of users. Depending on the outcome of this development phase, we could expect to start building a service early in 2018. We will provide further details in due course.