National Assembly for Wales
Children, Young People and Education Committee

ST 41

Inquiry into Supply Teaching
Evidence from : Supply Teacher

Having worked as a supply teacher specialising in secondary school Physical Education since 2005 I have recently stopped doing so.  I worked for one West Wales Secondary School exclusively and usually for no more than a month a year in total.  However I was a valued support to the PE Department and was regularly left in charge of Boys PE during the exodus of the department for the annual ski trip.

In 2013, if I remember correctly, the County Council decided to transfer supply teaching provision to a private agency whose terms of employment I thought were unacceptable.  Seeing as my pay would have been almost cut in half I came to a non contract arrangement between myself and the school as a way of maintaining my previous pay scale.  The school have since made it a policy to only employ supply teachers through the private agency and I have therefore been made surplus to requirements and the school have lost someone local who had a good understanding of the workings of the school and a close rapport with the members of the PE department.

I decided that if I jumped through the hoops set out by the private agency I'd be basically supporting their existence and as my livelihood wasn't dependent on continuing teaching that wasn't something I was prepared to do.  It appeared to me that the agency was taking a lot of money out of the pockets of supply teachers and offering little in return in terms of support, training or even just basic communication.  I would strongly agree that something needs to be done to reorganise the provision of supply teachers.  From what I have seen the private agency route has been a bad move which has had a negative effect on people for whom supply teaching is an important part of their livelihood.