Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what discussions she has had with stakeholders on (a) public, (b) cooperative and (c) non-profit models of supply teacher provision.

Supply teachers make an important contribution to the smooth running of schools across the country by filling posts on a temporary basis and covering teacher absences.

The department does not plan at this time to assess the potential merits of piloting a publicly funded national and regional supply teacher register. Schools and local authorities are responsible for the recruitment of their supply teachers and there are currently various approaches to providing supply teachers.

For example, local authority supply pools are one of the approaches to providing supply teachers and local authorities have the autonomy to decide whether to operate these supply teacher pools.

The department works closely with the Crown Commercial Service on supply teachers.