in praise of supply teachers

Supplying a need
As the recruitment crisis in Britain looks set to continue, it is time to re-evalutate our attitude to supply teachers. There are teacher shortages in all subjects in secondary schools, not just in the usual subjects such as modern languages, maths and science. As demand grows the agencies are relying more on qualified teachers from countries such as Australia, South Africa, Canada and New Zealand to supply our schools.

There have been calls for the government to relax working visa regulations regarding overseas teachers, giving them the opportunity to stay for four years instead of two. This would be a positive move and give schools more long-term options but it would not address the real recruitment problems in this country.

Supply teachers' pay can vary by ?40 a day, simply depending on which agency they work for, they are not covered by the teachers' pay and conditions document and most agencies do not contribute to teachers' pensions. Being a supply teacher is not easy: pupils can sense temporary staff from the other side of the playground, feel cheated and may behave badly; permanent teaching staff are jealous of the supply teacher's ability to take days off whenever they want during term time and often do not treat them as equals; even OFSTED is willing to put the boot in:

"... heavy use of supply teachers (has) an adverse effect upon standards. One-quarter of lessons taught by supply teachers are unsatisfactory: the quality of teaching by supply teachers is weaker than for all other groups of teacher including newly qualified and trainee teachers... Too often supply teachers receive insufficient guidance and support, and schools fail to provide them with adequate information about the attainment of the pupils they are teaching.

"The frequent use of supply teachers often disrupts regular routines, unsettles pupils and adversely affects their attitudes to work. In some schools, non-specialist supply teachers are used to cover specialist staff absence as some schools find it difficult to recruit temporary teachers of sufficient quality and expertise to cover for some subjects, especially in shortage areas...

(Summary of findings from 1999 inspections. The full document available at www.ofsted.gov.uk)

Value misjudgement
. Graham has been supply teaching in Bristol and the south west for the past eleven years:

"As a supply teacher, every day is full of getting there on time, going to the right entrance in the right building, finding out where everything is, finding the right room, not to mention finding out who not to upset if you want to carry on working at the school. Lots of teachers assume that you know all of these things already (so no one will ever show you where the photocopier is, or where lined paper is) or are too busy to stop what they are doing to explain..."

Sam, who qualified last year and has been supply teaching in the South East, has had similar experiences:
"If you move around a lot of schools, the first day is something you have to do every day. It's impossible to concentrate on teaching as you have to fit a term's worth of finding out, induction and exploring into your first fifteen minutes.

"Also, the fact that supply teachers are being used, and staffing is such a problem, tends to mean that you are unsupported through the day as no one is free to check on you. Not that anyone is interested in you anyway, as you are lower on the food chain in the staff room than NQTs."

Agency support
As well as the school experience, the relationship that the supply teacher has with his or her agency is crucial. Judy is from Sydney and has been teaching in London since January: "Obviously some agencies are better organised than others. My agency takes on a lot of southern hemisphere supply teachers, going so far as to help them with visas and setting up bank accounts.

To register, I had an interview with someone from the regional office and had to provide the standard proofs of qualification and references but I think that, provided you pass the police check, it would be pretty difficult not to be taken on... my interview was basically, "what subjects do you teach?" and "why supply teaching?".

They are very nice and supportive ? if you are in a long term placement they will come and visit you, and if things are hard they will send someone in for the day instead. However, such is the panic that ensues when teachers phone in sick at the last minute, that things can be very disorganised; I have been promised a day's English work and I have ended up teaching D&T, Geography and Art all day."

Sam has also had to teach the wrong subject and the wrong age group: "Everyone suffers in this kind of situation: the school clearly expected a specialist especially considering that they are paying upwards of ?140 a day; the students quickly realise that I don't know what I am talking about and I have an even more difficult day than usual. I've worked in primary and special schools, simply because the agency have phoned up at the last minute and I've needed the work..."

It is far easier to get rid of a supply teacher than a disruptive pupil; it only takes one phone call to the agency and the following day a new teacher turns up. Is it not time for supply teachers to have proper rights, a uniform discipline procedure or appeal process? Is it not time for supply teachers to be paid at the same rate as permanent teachers, including extra pay for years served and responsibilities where appropriate?

Is it not time for supply teachers to have the same pension rights as permanent staff? We constantly complain that teachers are not treated as proper professionals. Perhaps we need to look at the way that we treat supply teachers who are qualified professionals themselves and who provide a vital service in our schools.