Council sets up teacher agency as supply costs soar

• Friday, 23 October 2009 at 09:49 am

A local council has set up its own teacher supply agency in a pioneering scheme to avoid shelling out thousands of pounds for the services of staffing companies.

The scheme, which has government backing, is being studied by several other education authorities.

Nelstar, the North East Lincolnshire Supply Teacher Agency Register, guarantees to pay supply teachers the national rate. It is self-financing, with the council charging schools for the teachers it hires from them. The plan saves schools money by avoiding the mark-up that is charged by private agencies.

According to headteachers’ leaders, the cost of hiring a supply teacher from a private company in the past year has increased by up to 50 per cent ? from £120 a day to between £160 and £180 ? as staffing vacancies have risen. In the same time teachers’ pay has risen by less than 4 per cent.

“We have reached the stage where it costs £5,000 per year more to employ an agency teacher than it does to employ a young teacher on staff,” said David Hart, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers. Much of this year’s increase in school budgets has been swallowed up by the cost of hiring supply staff.

In addition, education officials say the scheme willcut the amount of time headteachers spend looking for supply staff.

The scheme has been praised by Stephen Timms, the School Standards minister, who said he would like to see Nelstar’s “good practice” spread to other teacher supply agencies.

A spokeswoman for North East Lincolnshire Council said of the scheme: “We started it because we felt headteachers were spending so much of their time trying to locate supply teachers. We were given a grant from the Department for Education and Skills from its fund to help the recruitment and retention of teachers to test the feasibility of the project. Since we set it up, we’ve had a number of other authorities coming to Cleethorpes [the council's headquarters] to see what we are doing.

“We pay teachers national conditions of service and they are entitled to join a pension scheme which I believe they can’t with private teaching agencies. Of course, headteachers are free to contact other teaching agencies for cover. Some teachers might also register with more than one agency to get more work. At the moment it is only our schools which can use the agency, although we have had requests from a number of other authorities.”

Philip Parkin, deputy head of Old Clee junior school in Grimsby and local representative of the Professional Association of Teachers, said: “I think it is the only authority to have set up its own supply teacher agency. Private teaching agencies top-slice part of teachers’ salaries, and it is the schools who have to pay for that.”

Mr Parkin said there were still difficulties in the area recruiting staff to cover for vacancies and one secondary school had advertised that it still had 10 vacancies for the start of the new term.

“We have had teachers from Doncaster, Rotherham and Sheffield who would prefer to become supply teachers here because their salaries will not be top-sliced,” he added. “We still haven’t got enough.”

Mr Timms said: “I congratulate Nelstar’s determination in seeking to help make sure that good-quality supply teachers are available to schools in the area.”
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