Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she has made an assessment of the potential benefits of creating an agency for supply teachers to standardise pay and conditions.

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 currently responsible for the recruitment of their supply teachers and are best placed to make decisions on their approach to recruitment.

A supply teacher’s pay and working conditions will depend on who employs the supply teacher.

Supply teachers employed directly by a state maintained school or local authority must be paid in accordance with the statutory arrangements for teachers laid down in the School Teachers’ Pay and Conditions Document.

If a supply teacher is employed by a private agency or non-maintained school, the employer can set the rate of pay and conditions of employment.

The department does not have plans at this time to assess the potential benefits of creating an agency for supply teachers to standardise pay and conditions. Instead, we are focused on our central mission to break down barriers to opportunity and boost life chances for every child by recruiting an additional 6,500 new expert teachers across our schools, both mainstream and specialist, and our colleges over the course of this parliament.

The department is already making progress towards this key pledge, including by accepting a 5.5% pay award for teachers and leaders in maintained schools, announcing a £233 million Initial Teacher Training financial incentives package for the 2025/26 recruitment cycle, and confirming targeted retention incentives for shortage subjects worth up to £6,000 after tax. We will continue to work alongside the sector as we seek to re-establish teaching as an attractive profession that existing teachers want to remain in, former teachers want to return to, and new graduates wish to join.