CONTRIBUTORS
Is supplier switching hitting your bottom line? Class People’s Naomi Howells explores the potential
impact for schools of switching suppliers.
As the teaching staff shortage persists, it has become common practice for schools to place permanent vacancies and/or supply teacher requests with multiple agencies to assure urgent cover. But the practice might be costing schools far more financially than traditional preferred-supplier models.
This is of particular concern given the recent Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) report, which has highlighted
that costs are likely to outpace funding for the 2025/26 academic year. In turn, this will force Head teachers to make “difficult choices” about provision. Putting cost-savings high on the agenda is a must, and one key opportunity is a change in recruitment strategy.
In more buoyant markets where there was no shortage of full-time or supply teachers, it was common practice for schools to select a single or preferred supplier for all their recruitment needs. As well as offering advantages for the cultural fit of candidates and the overall quality of recruitment, a key advantage to this approach was cost-savings. Savings, secured through loyalty, incentives, and reduced operational costs, that can be immediately allocated to alternatives.
Here are three ways loyalty pays:
• Innovative strategies and expert advice: preferred partners are invested in delivering value, including saving you money whenever possible. A key opportunity for cutting costs is to work together to map out your spend and evaluate potential savings from an updated approach. This could include recruiting a floating staff member, changing supply hours to minimise weekly cost, or updating your recruitment journey to make savings at the recruiting and onboarding stages, as just some of the examples. Even if you don’t want to commit to a single supplier, many agencies offer audit services to offer this advice.
• Better candidate matching: quality recruitment is particularly pressing given the 2,800 permanent teaching vacancies that remain unfilled, driving competition for the best candidates. Sources differ but conservative estimates place recruitment, onboarding and initial training costs at anything between £5,000 and £15,000 per vacancy. That’s an expensive mistake if you get it wrong. Partnering with an agency not only helps to improve the likelihood of candidate cultural fit, but it also expands the pool of potential applicants. This is particularly true given the current demand for job security leading to teachers transitioning out of supply and back into permanent vacancies.
• Reduced overall fees: let’s face it, agencies that have exclusive agreements will be prepared to offer value savings on the overall annual costs. Favourable rates and volume discounts are just some of the potential savings.
One of the key challenges is the total availability of candidates, with head teachers concerned that they won’t secure the urgent help needed. Exclusivity can feel like a risk in this marketplace, so a middle-ground can be achieved by offering semi-exclusive terms such as first refusal of roles, to a single supplier. This helps your agency to better plan resources and allocate certain candidates to your school, as well as securing improved agency rates.
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www.education-today.co.uk
What is unique about the teaching of teachers?
Education Today hears from Gareth Conway of the Teacher Development Trust.
One of the joys of working with teachers is the relentless drive to improve outcomes for the children they are teaching. Whether it is engaging in grand projects like the curriculum and assessment review currently being led by Professor Becky Francis on behalf of the Government,
or conversations amongst colleagues in a school or subject department, there is something inherent in being a teacher which promotes looking for improvements and new ideas. This has been supported by a specific field of study around pedagogy which brings together teachers, school leaders, and academics from around the world to explore new evidence and ideas on how best to teach children. The last decade and more has seen a substantive increase in the wider understanding – not always without controversy – of things like cognitive science, for example, which have translated directly into the pedagogical approaches used in schools throughout the country. By having a specific field of focus, the lens of pedagogy helps all involved in teaching explore concepts, challenge ideas, and develop new thinking whilst working within a generally agreed understanding of what they are trying to achieve.
One area that has had less attention, however, is our understanding about the teaching of teachers. What might be different about that discipline and how best can we frame conversations and come together to explore new ideas? There is a phrase for the teaching of adults – andragogy – but this is generic for all adult learning so, although it is no doubt useful, does it do enough to capture anything unique about the teaching of teachers? Is there something, for example, more ‘meta’ in trying to teach the very people whose understanding of pedagogy is so strong? Do we need to think about whether the same approaches that are used for children – pedagogy – or adults more broadly – andragogy – need to be refined or adapted when teaching teachers? What assumptions do we make if we don’t set aside time to think this through? Let’s look at an example. I was recently in a conversation with a trust CPD lead who talked about the work they were doing around the trust on coaching for teachers. In particular, the team had considered the cognitive load of introducing a new programme. But the evidence they used was largely around our understanding of cognitive load from their pedagogical approaches – that is, cognitive load for children – when we know that adult brains process information differently and also know that the level of expertise possessed has an impact on how new information is digested and acted upon. What difference might it make to the introduction of a new coaching programme if considered through a specific lens – a deliberate seeking of relevant evidence – of teaching teachers? It might be that the unique differences are few and undoubtedly the teaching of teachers will share many characteristics with wider pedagogy and andragogy, but until we really start to explore the question in depth, we will never know. Watch this space for more work from us on this idea!
April 2025
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