As we head into the winter season it is clear that Covid-19 - and other seasonal illnesses - are having a big impact on staff absence rates.

For instance, recent Department for Education data for early November showed 2.1 per cent of teachers and school leaders were absent for Covid-related reasons, up from 1.8 per cent the previous week.

In normal times when staff are sick, schools turn to supply teachers to cover lessons and ensure there is a safe adult-to-child ratio in the school, as is legally required.

However, schools are increasingly finding the usual pool of supply teachers they can hire from is not as deep as it was once - a point raised recently by Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the NAHT school leaders’ union. “We know that schools are finding it increasingly hard to cover staff absence and, in many cases, they simply cannot afford the cost of so many supply teachers.”

This is not the first time it has come to light either, with Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, warning in October there are not enough cover teachers to keep pace with rising staff absences. “The issue [is] exacerbated by an acute shortage of suitably qualified supply staff,” he said.

While there is no definite data on the extent of the shortage, Paul Watkins, a national negotiating official at the NASUWT teaching union, estimates the number of supply teachers has fallen by a quarter, based on discussions with trade bodies. “There has been a drop-off,” he adds.

All of this is putting a lot of pressure on schools by making it far harder and more time-consuming to find supply teachers.

“It’s not that we can never get supply teachers, but it’s more difficult than it had been at short notice,” a teacher from a South London primary told us. “There never used to be a problem. If someone was off sick, you just would phone an agency and they would send somebody.”

The pandemic effect

So if there is a shortage, what is causing it?

The obvious place to start is with the pandemic. During lockdown, supply teachers were not needed as schools switched to remote learning, and very few were eligible for furlough because the scheme was based on the number of hours worked.

Anne Morgan, a supply teacher from Greater Manchester who organises for the National Education Union, says for many, the lack of income meant they had to “go out and get different jobs” and have yet to return to teaching.

For others, she speculates they may have moved into full-time teaching or teaching assistant roles, preferring the stability of full-time employment to the flexibility of supply, given the uncertainty caused by the pandemic.

Rachel Ridgill, director of HR at the David Ross Education Trust, has seen this, too, noting that the “new funding stream for tutors that allowed schools to bring in additional tutoring capacity” has meant those who were previously in the supply market are now working in another capacity that has removed them from the cover pool.

Classroom concerns

On top of this, there is also the fact that for some supply teachers, the risk from Covid-19 has meant the idea of going into school is not feasible.

Helen, a supply teacher also from Manchester, was forced to stop working to care for her seriously ill parents as she wanted to avoid going into schools, which would significantly increase the risk of her taking Covid home to them.

She’s now thinking about resuming teaching but says she is faced with “an awful situation” where she has to stop caring for her parents to go back to the classroom because of the risks it can bring. “I can’t believe I’ll be the only person in this sort of situation,” she adds.

Indeed, there may well be many other supply teachers hesitant to re-enter the classroom amid safety concerns, given that students are not yet fully vaccinated - nor are schools making it clear what the local situation is when recruiting supplies.

Watkins says this is something that schools need to provide better information on. “Schools have had these procedures and protocols in place for several months now,” he says. “They’re well versed on it [but] it seems like they’re clearly not providing information within an adequate time.

“[Supply teachers are] not told about the health and safety requirements within schools. And certainly, they’re not being told in enough time to maybe make an appropriate decision [about whether to work].”

Cost of living 

Even if these concerns can be set aside, the other issue that could be impacting supply teachers’ availability is that the potential earnings from the role are dwindling when set against cost-of-living inflation.

“For years now, supply teacher pay has just been pushed down and down,” says Morgan, who describes how 15 years ago when she was newly qualified, she would typically expect to earn £125 for a day’s teaching in Manchester.

But today, new supply teachers can expect to earn only around £100, she says. That works out as around £19,000 if the supply teacher manages to work every day of the school year.

And unfortunately, a shortage may not lead to higher wages - as might be expected. “Supply teaching is one of those funny quirks where the laws of supply and demand don’t seem to work,” says Watkins. “No matter how desperate schools are for supply teachers, there doesn’t seem to be a desire to pay them more.”

The reason for this, according to Watkins, is down to the supply teacher agencies and the broader financial pressure on schools. Essentially, even if the number of supply teachers is dwindling, there’s no extra money for schools to pay more to book them.

Morgan agrees, noting that despite “headteachers and schools [being] desperate for supply staff”, they are also “desperate to do it as cheaply as possible”. This puts “pressure on agencies to drive down costs” - which they do by lowering salaries - because they still need to take their commission on top.

All told, it means the supply teacher loses out. The result is that many have left the profession or are working in other capacities in school.

Ideas for the future 

Clearly, there are a lot of issues here, and some are beyond schools’ control to fix in the short term.

However, looking to the future, both Morgan and Watkins agree schools could do more to take a more proactive approach to how they work with supply teachers - perhaps bypassing agencies entirely.

“We’ve been saying to schools for several years now, ‘Why don’t you look at a model where maybe you directly employ some supply teachers?’” says Watkins. “You pay them to scale, you pay [them a pension]. And you’ve got first dibs on them.”

He even envisages a future where schools could work together, each directly employing supply teachers but sharing them when needed. “They would also be up to speed with things like policies in the school. And they’d also have a much better understanding of how your school operates.”

This is an intriguing idea and maybe something that large trusts could make work. But it is also an idea that would take time to put in place and get up and running, so it’s not going to solve the current shortages.

For now, the reality for many schools is that they are having to put contingencies in place, to account for not being able to find suitable cover teachers to provide a safe teacher-pupil ratio.

For example, the teacher from a South London primary says that her school has worked up a plan for where children will be sent if they can’t get a supply teacher; contingencies include combining classes from different year groups or even having senior leaders take lessons.

She admits it is an “extreme idea” and not one with many benefits: “They’re not going to get a lot of learning done if there are three children from Year 5 sitting in Year 1 for the day. It’s basically just babysitting at that point.”

However, she says that without the guarantee of cover, these plans have had to be drawn up ready to be used if required.

Meanwhile, a secondary teacher told us that she had heard of headteachers drawing up emergency plans that would send entire year groups home as a result of the apparent shortage. “They’re ringing every agency, and they just can’t get enough people in,” she says. “So they’re actually really, really struggling.”

Clearly, none of this is ideal. What’s more, as winter progresses, it could well be that the situation only gets worse.

As such, schools may want to follow the initiative of those above by starting to suss out what the supply situation is like in the local area and creating contingency plans that, even if they feel “extreme”, could be called upon to keep children safe and in school.

James O’Malley is a freelance journalist