Will the Minister confirm what the role of the teacher supply agencies is within the process of appointing 900 extra teachers?
I can confirm funding for this financial year for the Recruit, Recover, Raise Standards: Accelerated Learning Programme was distributed to local authorities in early August and they have also received the specific details of their school-level allocations.
In total, the fund allocates more than £30m to schools and local authorities in Wales. Schools receive £28.4m (for pre-16 learners), while each of the four regions receive around £230k to support their capacity to deliver a high-level of coherence in the mobilisation of the programme.
The regional funding supports collaboration and working together to maximise the impact of the school grant across partners such as local authorities and organisations in the third sector. There is also £4.18m for schools (via local authorities) to provide funding for enhanced support to the post-16 element of provision in schools (learners in academic years 12 and 13). The principles applied to the funding are consistent across funding streams. The funding is split across financial years 2020-21 and 2021-22 due to the financial/academic year cross over.
As outlined when the support was announced in July, the scheme equates to the equivalent of 600 teachers and 300 support staff across the system. However, as articulated in the key principles document (published 24 August) Recruit, Recover and Raise standards: the accelerating learning programme we do not want to place restrictions on headteachers in how they go about appointing and deploying this new capacity, and we recognise that roles will differ between schools and settings.
As the new term commences, leaders and teachers across the system will be assessing learners’ needs and development, building on the check-in period for everyone before the summer break. They will use the start of the new term to build on their understanding of where learners are in their learning, and be in a position to better understand how they can use the available funding to provide extra coaching support, personalised learning programmes and additional time and resources for exam year pupils
In recognition that schools are not formally in session during July and August, and are finalising their plans for the £29m funding, we have not yet started monitoring progress in filling roles linked to this scheme. We do not currently hold data on the numbers of teachers and other staff recruited to support this programme (either wholly or on a part-time basis). We will be working with local authorities during September to understand how schools and local authorities are deploying this additional capacity; the nature of the support they are creating and their progress in recruiting to roles and deploying capacity to support learners.
As outlined in the principles document it is for headteachers, working with their governing bodies, local authorities and the regions to determine what they intend to do with the available resource, identifying the number of pupils to be supported and the specific staffing solutions they will deploy. We will be working with practitioners throughout this time to capture case studies for Hwb and sharing these experiences to enable headteachers to reflect on their own approaches.
As recruitment is a matter for schools, governing bodies and local authorities, recruitment will be handled at a local level. As a government, we are working with the Education Workforce Council (EWC) to target specific registrant groups, (such as NQTs, supply-teachers, teaching assistants etc), to promote the programme to and enable them to express an interest in potential roles. We will also be supporting the scheme with marketing and communications at a national level.
At the start of the academic year, there are always a number of recently qualified teachers in the system and available for employment. We anticipate a number of vacancies generated by the programme will be filled from this group.
A further proportion of these vacancies are expected to be filled by staff from the supply sector, many of whom have been unable to secure work since schools closed in March. Supply staff in Wales cover a range of roles and can be directly employed by schools or local authorities. While we do not expect unnecessary use of supply agencies by schools and local authorities in filling the available vacancies, we do expect that individuals from the supply pool will be recruited.