Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much was spent on supply teachers in England and Wales in the academic year 2013-14.

Local authority (LA) maintained schools’ funding is allocated per financial year, whereas academy school funding is allocated on the basis of the academic year.

In the financial year 2012-13 the amount spent on supply teachers[1] in LA maintained schools in England was £893,389,000. The 2013-14 data for LA maintained schools will be available in December. The amount spent on supply teachers in academies[2] in England in the 2012-13 academic year was £176,384,000. The 2013/14 data for academies will be available in the summer of 2015.

Academies have responsibilities that maintained schools do not, particularly around services previously provided by the local authority (library services, behavioural support services, audit costs, etc.) and maintenance of capital assets. This can affect what the academy spends its funding on, meaning that an academy, by its nature, is likely to have a different pattern of spend than a maintained school. For this reason, figures for academies and maintained schools are not directly comparable.

Expenditure on supply teachers in Wales is a devolved matter.

[1] Includes salaries and wages for supply teaching staff employed directly by the school, premiums paid to insurers for supply teacher cover and includes costs paid to an agency for teaching staff that have been brought in to cover teacher absence. Includes cover of any period and for all reasons including illness, absence for training, and any leave.

[2] The figures quoted for academies only include 1633 Single Academy Trusts and 135 Multi Academy Trusts that returned an accounting return (AR) for at least the full academic year of 2012/13. Multi academy trusts where one or more school within the trust was not open for the full 2012/13 academic year are not included.