Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate her Department has made of the cost to the public purse of employing teachers supplied by recruitment agencies between 2010 and 2017.

Information on Local Authority maintained school expenditure is collected in Consistent Financial Reporting returns. Academy expenditure is collected in Academies Accounts Returns. This information is subsequently published on the School Financial Benchmarking website, and for Local Authority maintained schools, in the annual official statistic ‘Local Authority and school expenditure’. This can be found here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/la-and-school-expenditure.

Data for Local Authority maintained schools covers 1 April 2010 to 31 March 2017, and for academies and academy trusts covers 1 September 2011 to 31 August 2016. Due to changes in the collection of academy data, and the increase in the number of academies, figures prior to 2017 are not comparable.

Expenditure on agency teaching staff recruitment in state-funded schools in England, by year¹ (£1,000s)

- Data not available.

Source: Academies Accounts Returns and Consistent Financial Reporting returns.

¹ Year refers to financial year for local authority maintained schools (e.g. 2016 = 1 April 2016 – 31 March 2017) and academic year for academies (e.g. 2016 = 1 September 2015 – 31 August 2016).

² Local authority maintained school expenditure line E26 'agency supply teaching staff'.

³ Academy expenditure line BNCH21606 'agency supply teaching staff'.

⁴ Includes only complete year returns (i.e. excludes academies that were only open for part of the year) and excludes centra service expenditure.