Teachers for Supply

With the crisis of shortage of teachers in the UK in the headlines, it seemed a good time to investigate the effect this would have on the supply teachers industry. Unfortunately many teachers are leaving the profession, even a high umber within their first year, often due to stress and workloads.

Often supply teachers are having to be called in to schools on a more regular basis to cover for stress related illnesses or to cover a class until permanent staff are found. This does mean there are more supply teaching jobs around, but as a supply teacher you may find yourself pushed in to a full time position without even realising it. If the supply teacher is good, the school are often forking out more than they would with a permanent member of staff to keep them on board and many are even being offered a full time position.

A recent report has been published questioning whether supply teachers are fulfilling their roles and educating our children to the level they need to be. This report comes after Ofsted has found that supply teachers in secondary schools are four times more likely than permanent teachers to give sub-standard lessons. Only one third of schools in the UK has a reliable pool of staff that they can call on to come in and cover lessons should they need to. Other schools have to hire staff that they may never have met before and that may be substandard.

These statistics are worrying but we do need to remember that this does not apply to all supply teachers as there are some great ones out there who go the extra mile to ensure their lessons are taught to an exceptional standard.

Teaching agencies can offer a great service to schools, finding staff very quickly for them but schools need to check with the agency as to how they evaluate the supply teachers abilities.

If you are a supply teacher looking for work, you may want to consider registering with an agency. Supply teaching agencies will often have posts available for you to start immediately and once you are on their books, they can put you forward for any new teaching work that comes in.

Most teaching agencies do not charge you to register with them but will take a small percentage of your daily wage once they have found you work. This does put some people off, but the extra amount of work you are likely to get from using an agency will easily more than cover their fees.

To decide which agency to use, I would recommend trying to obtain reviews and also statistics off the teaching agency such as how many job vacancies they currently have on their books. Also confirm any fees up front to avoid disputes further down the line.

If you have been out of full time teaching for a while whether it’s down to a career break or you’ve taken time out for training then a good way to ease yourself back into school life is to do some supply teaching. This be the very nature of supply work will give you a lot of different experiences of a number of schools in a fairly short space of time where you can readjust to school life.

The pay for supply work is quite a bit higher than a salaried teacher due to the fact that the contracts can be very short (even half day contracts) and you are expected to be available at very short notice if the cover is for a teacher whose ill or unexpectedly absent.

You may even decide that you prefer the set-up of agency teaching and that it actually fits in with your lifestyle better than a full time teaching position, either way it’s a great way to bridge the gap when looking to stay in a teaching environment.

As a supply teacher you may have a few gaps in the day caused by lessons finishing early, assembly running late or waiting for resource so it’s always a great idea to have a few short tasks up your sleeve to keep the children occupied and maintain control of the class.

The word game – This is where you write the name of a storybook/film character on the board, e.g Mary Poppins and ask the children to quickly write down all the words that they can make using those letters with a prize for the person with the most words.

The dictionary game – Allow the children to pick a letter then you read from the dictionary the definition of the word and they guess what the word is (ensuring children raise their hand to guess, not shout out)

Hangman – sometimes the oldies are the best and this game is a great simple one that you can play with the whole class to distract them for a few minutes.