NUT Supply Teachers’ Conference

Saturday, 27th June, 2015Shelagh Kavanagh

Supply Teacher and NUT activist

I am not a human resource

What are you then? (what the agencies say)

• A supply teaching job can be an attractive proposition for many teachers, offering far greater flexibility than a permanent teaching post. Many teachers earn a good living from it as a positive career choice, rather than an interim measure.

• The flexibility and autonomy is a big draw. With daily supply, you can have days off whenever you choose. • While most teachers can only take holidays out of term-time, supply teachers can benefit from off-peak prices and can avoid

crowds. You can choose to work for a week or a few weeks, then do something else, or try another school. Less experienced teachers can gain valuable experience without committing themselves to a permanent post.

• So, how can you get this flexible lifestyle, with a steady stream of jobs offered to you? If you are looking to work as a supply teacher, there are many advantages in engaging with supply teaching agencies like Randstad. If you are looking for a teaching job, supply teaching agencies do all the job-hunting for you, contacting you with offers of interviews from schools. If you receive an employment offer, you work for the school or local education authority.So, what are the options?

• Daily Supply – covering lessons if teachers are off school. Usually for only 1-2 days.Only work on the days you choose, or sample a variety of schools. You don’t have to do marking or planning lessons – because the absent permanent teacher does this for you.

• Short-Term Supply – up to half a term.You commit to, and are guaranteed, work for this time at this place. You teach the same classes every week, so you can build relationships. You take on some of the responsibilities of the absent teacher like marking and short-term planning. Some schools use supply to give teachers a ‘trial run’ before offering them a permanent post.

• Long-Term Supply – half a term or longer.A fixed timetable, with more stability and less uncertainty. Long term supply teachers are often offered permanent contracts afterwards. You have time to really get to know a school, your colleagues, and the pupils. You have responsibilities of a permanent teacher (parent’s evenings, reports, etc.) with most of the benefits. Long-term supply teachers even hold positions of responsibility, and get a leaving do – if they do leave!

(sourced from the Webpages of Randstand UK)

The best case scenario• Your agency notifies you of a booking by 7.30 - you get dressed, set the sat nav and get there by 8.30.• You arrive at the school, the car park is not locked and there is a space for you.• The school is on a single site and reception are expecting you.• A senior member of staff or head of department greets you and gives you a quick briefing, timetable for the

day and the work for the absent teacher has been planned.• You are given a key or code so you can enter the classroom and open the cupboards.• You are given a temporary password so you can get onto the computer to access the registers and interactive

whiteboards.• The register you have matches the class in front of you.• You have a confidential list of students with specific learning needs so you don't set back months of

specialised mentoring on a student who does't speak English or has a disability or provoke a student who has anger management issues.

• There are books, pens, paper tables and chairs, heating, bins, windows that open in the classroom.• You have been notified of where the facilities are and the timings of the day so the kids won't fool you into

letting them out 15 minutes early.• The work that is set is not just "make a poster about Shakespeare/Climate Change/Healthy eating" for the

umpteenth time. There is a realistic lesson plan that gives the students a task that follows on from their previous lessons.

• You are not required to conjure up an age appropriate, challenging, subject specific, 60 minute lesson on any given curriculum area on the spot.

• Other staff answer your questions if there is a problem.• Students have been taught by their regular teacher until today, so they know what they are doing.

Best case scenario• You keep your part of the bargain.• You arrive promptly, dressed appropriately and ready to do a

professional job.• Students ask you questions about their work and you help them.• You keep the class in order because the students know the rules. • You leave the room tidy and collect in the completed work.• You mark the key pieces of work for the absent teacher and leave

them a handover note.

• At the end of the week your agency processes your time-sheet, the school confirms you attended and fulfilled your obligations and you get paid.

Worst case scenario

• None of the above

• Or even worse still – no phone call

Show me the money

• Half of respondents said their daily rate of pay was £100-£124. Another 22% had said it was “£125-£149”. Only 33 respondents - less than 4% - said that they were paid £150 (which is still 10% below the “national rate” for a teacher with 5 years’ experience) or above. One in six, however, said that they were paid less than £100.

• (source NUT 2014 supply teacher survey)

Numbers• Over 2/3 of supply teachers now find work through agencies• 75% of these are women• Biggest market share of NUT teachers

• Teaching Personnel • Randstad Education • Hays Education • Protocol Education • Capita Education • Vision • Monarch • Supply Desk • Reed • New Directions

Who is Number 2?• Agency staff are sales people as this advertisement demonstrates.

• Recruitment Consultant• The Education Network in Peterborough is expanding and as result need

to recruit two additional Recruitment Consultants to our busy team.• We are looking for a sales driven person who is motivated by money and

success with a proven track record of providing high levels of service to existing clients and building new business. Do you enjoy working in a fast paced sales environment, enjoy working under pressure and enjoy a sales industry where everyday is different?

• The ideal candidate will enjoy reaping the rewards of their individual sales efforts, can develop their own skills and ideas to shape the success of their desk, and most importantly display enthusiasm, persistence and perseverance.

Spend, spend, spend• Maximise your take-home pay!

• Randstad Education is partnering with Key Portfolio to offer you additional benefits and the opportunity to increase your take-home pay.

• Key Portfolio is an Umbrella Company which already pays thousands of education workers every week - including many from Randstad. Working with Key means you will become an employee of their Umbrella Company, Key Portfolio Limited, and you will therefore receive the full range of statutory employment benefits.

• In addition to this, you have the possibility of increasing your take-home pay by treating the work-related expenses you incur as tax and NI free amounts, meaning you can reduce the expenditure on your assignment-related costs.

• This move means that the sooner you sign up with Key, the sooner you will be able to take advantage of the employment benefits and begin to claim your expenses.

• We guarantee you will receive a tailored salary and employment consultation to ensure the switch to Key Portfolio will be the right move for you.

(Sourced from an email sent to all Randstad Supply Teachers in 2013)

…ella, ella, ellabelow is a quote from George Osborne

The government is also concerned at the growing use of overarching contracts of employment by employment intermediaries such as ‘umbrella companies’, which allow some temporary workers to benefit from tax relief for home to-work travel expenses that is not generally available to other workers.

In brief (information for those new to agency supply work)

1. DBS. Don't pay the agency in advance for the cost of processing a new DBS. Ask for it to be deducted from your pay so the agency will have to place you. As soon as your DBS certificate arrives, apply for renewal so it can be used for any agency or school. 2. Payroll. Don't accept Umbrella Company payroll. Insist on being paid via the agency's UK payroll with PAYE. Ask for documentation and a cooling off period so that you can read your contract. Do not buy any insurances that your agency might imply that you need. If in doubt contact your union. 3. Rates of pay. All rates of pay are negotiable. Don't accept the agency's first offer. After 12 weeks on one placement you are entitled to be paid to scale. 4. Guaranteed pay, guaranteed work schemes. These are not a good deal for longer serving teachers as the pay rate is low and you are only guaranteed four days' pay if you are not placed. You have to accept any booking, even if it is not suitable. The rate is not negotiable once you have signed up. 5. Pension. Your Teachers' Pension Scheme is not portable if you are an agency worker. You can't make top up payments. Not being employed in a full time job can also affect your eligibility for other financial services such as loans, leasing agreements and mortgages.

6. Travel expenses, holiday pay, sick pay. CPD. You are not entitled to any of these. Umbrella payroll companies seem to offer this but it is only in the form of tax offsets, not actual payments. Just negotiate a better day rate.

7. Employment status. While you are at any client school, you are an employee of the agency. The school is not your employer and thus should not negotiate directly with you but via the agency. Any changes to timings or job description must be notified to the agency by the school. You must first notify the agency and not the school of your availability.

8. Observations, Performance Management. Schools should not carry these out unless it is agreed with your agency's quality control policies. If you are delivering the school's pre-planned lessons, only the quality of the work left for you is to be appraised. The agency has already vetted you as suitable. Any concerns should be dealt with by the agency. You may be expected to mark numeracy and literacy work at primary level.

9. Union rights. As a qualified teacher, you are still entitled to be a Union member. Supply teachers pay a reduced membership fee.

10. NQTs. If the school agrees, you can complete QTS as an interim agency teacher.

In brief -2(information for those new to agency supply work)

Stop whingeing! (What people have said to us about our campaign)

Typical greedy teachers!You should be glad you’ve got a job!You’re raking it in!Get a real job!None of this is true, you’re making it up!You’re moaning about earning £120 a day?How schools spend their budget is their choice!

The following slides are from a briefing for head teachers and governors

• A large number of head teachers are not aware of what is happening in the supply teaching business.

• They do not know that private agencies are making a profit out of them.

Agency commission mark up and introduction fees:

• In the absence of any transparency on this matter due to commercial confidentiality requirements, the exact sums are not disclosed. There is no transparency as there had been with LEA supply pools. However it is estimated that any agency will charge between £180 – 210 per day for a qualified teacher and pay the teacher on average £100 – 125 per day; quite a mark-up for one phone call. If a supply teacher fits in with a school’s requirements, the school still has to pay a further introduction fee if they wish to hire the teacher full-time (this is usually 10 – 20% of the teacher’s gross annual salary). Some exemptions can apply but schools often are unaware of these. Where that money then goes is undisclosed but many corporate investors are not domiciled in the UK. Across the UK this is an extremely lucrative market which is siphoning off money that was ring-fenced for education. If it is, as Jeremy Hunt declared a “rip-off” in the NHS, why is it not the same in Education?

Loss of tax revenue via Umbrella Company payroll:

• Many recruitment agencies require their supply teachers to sign up to umbrella payroll schemes. These are offshore payroll companies who were initially set up to give tax advantages to self-employed consultants who have no fixed workplace and who incur high travel and subsistence expenses. The tax exemptions do not strictly apply to supply teachers as they commute from home and they do not generate their own work. The loss of tax income to HMRC is considerable and is currently under investigation. The matter was alluded to in the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement and has been raised in Parliament as a dubious practice. The worst case scenario for a teacher is that they could be sanctioned for “false declaration of self-employment” and be required to pay back all the unpaid tax or face prosecution. Teachers want to pay tax via PAYE to continue to finance the Education system.

Choice:

• In Scotland and Northern Ireland supply teachers are still sourced via a central register. In most local authorities in England there are no longer any supply pools. There is no choice but to use agencies.

Price wars:

• Agencies are businesses and so they have to establish a share of the market. A recent trend has been for rival local branches of agencies to undercut each other. This is driving teachers out of the profession as pay rates continue to go down. This is not the best way to retain a stable of quality supply teachers. Agencies are avoiding their obligation to pay teachers to scale in compliance with Agency Workers’ Regulations by obliging them to sign Regulation 10 (Swedish Derogation) clauses thereby forcing wages down permanently low in order to extract a high commission.

Lack of inward reinvestment:

• The legislation that governs the recruitment sector is the Conduct of Employment Agencies Act. This has no relation to the needs of schools and children at all. Agencies are not obliged to do any more than check that their candidates have the appropriate qualifications and are put through DBS clearance. They are not subject to any of the legal requirements of a school. Thus any profit they make is not spent on schools, children’s services, teacher training or in any way kept in the system. It is gone for good.

Lack of statutory regulation:

• There is no statutory regulatory body to moderate the conduct of agencies. The REC Quality Mark was withdrawn under the Coalition in 2013. There is no evidence of scrutiny of practice at branch level. There is virtually no precedent in law of agencies being sanctioned under current legislation so non-compliant practice is widespread. Schools are unwittingly participating in unfair employment practices.

What do we want?

• In the short term, supply teachers want • a much clearer job description, • equal pay for work of equal value, • access to TPS and • UK based PAYE payroll.• In the long term, we want schools to have a

real choice of sourcing supply teachers without agencies.

Hey, Nicky!

— Jeremy Hunt (@Jeremy_Hunt) June 2, 2015We're cracking down on rip-off agency fees & use of management consultants in the NHS: every £ possible must go on direct patient care.

(sourced from Jeremy Hunt’s [Sec of State for Health] Twitter account)

Sign the petition

• https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/stop-the-agency-rip-off-in-education?time=1436035484