Cynulliad Cenedlaethol Cymru The National Assembly for Wales Y Pwyllgor Plant, Pobl Ifanc ac Addysg The Children, Young People and Education Committee
Dydd Mercher, 6 Mai 2015 Wednesday, 6 May 2015
Cynnwys Contents Cyflwyniad, Ymddiheuriadau a Dirprwyon Introductions, Apologies and Substitutions Ymchwiliad i Waith Athrawon Cyflenwi—Sesiwn Dystiolaeth 7 Inquiry into Supply Teaching—Evidence Session 7 Ymchwiliad i Waith Athrawon Cyflenwi—Sesiwn Dystiolaeth 8 Inquiry into Supply Teaching—Evidence Session 8 Ymchwiliad i Waith Athrawon Cyflenwi—Sesiwn Dystiolaeth 9 Inquiry into Supply Teaching—Evidence Session 9 Papurau i’w Nodi Papers to Note
Cofnodir y trafodion hyn yn yr iaith y llefarwyd hwy ynddi yn y pwyllgor. Yn ogystal, cynhwysir trawsgrifiad o’r cyfieithu ar y pryd. These proceedings are reported in the language in which they were spoken in the committee. In addition, a transcription of the simultaneous interpretation is included.
Aelodau’r pwyllgor yn bresennol Committee members in attendance
Keith Davies	Llafur Labour
Suzy Davies	Ceidwadwyr Cymru Welsh Conservatives
Bethan Jenkins	Plaid Cymru The Party of Wales
Ann Jones	Llafur (Cadeirydd y Pwyllgor) Labour (Chair of the Committee)
David Rees	Llafur Labour
Aled Roberts	Democratiaid Rhyddfrydol Cymru Welsh Liberal Democrats
Simon Thomas	Plaid Cymru The Party of Wales
Eraill yn bresennol Others in attendance
Dr Philip Dixon	Cyfarwyddwr, Cymdeithas Athrawon a Darlithwyr Cymru Director, Association of Teachers and Lecturers Cymru
David Healey	Aelod o Bwyllgor y Gymdeithas Athrawon a Darlithwyr yng Nghymru Member of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers Committee in Wales
Angela Jardine	Cadeirydd y Cyngor, Cyngor y Gweithlu Addysg Chair of Council, Education Workforce Council
Derek Lefley	Rheolwr Datblygu Busnes Strategol (y De), Teaching Personnel Ltd Strategic Business Development Manager (South), Teaching Personnel Ltd
Gareth Lewis	Cymdeithas Athrawon a Darlithwyr yng Nghymru Association of Teachers and Lecturers Committee in Wales
Hayden Llewellyn	Prif Swyddog Gweithredol, Cyngor y Gweithlu Addysg Chief Executive Officer, Education Workforce Council
Gary Williams	Cyfarwyddwr Grŵp Datblygu Busnes, New Directions Education Group Director of Business Development, New Directions Education
Swyddogion Cynulliad Cenedlaethol Cymru yn bresennol National Assembly for Wales officials in attendance
Sarah Bartlett	Dirprwy Glerc Deputy Clerk
Sian Hughes	Y Gwasanaeth Ymchwil Research Service
Gareth Rogers	Clerc Clerk
Dechreuodd y cyfarfod am 9.33 a.m. The meeting began at 9.33 a.m.
Cyflwyniad, Ymddiheuriadau a Dirprwyon Introductions, Apologies and Substitutions
[1] Ann Jones: Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the Children, Young People and Education Committee. I’ll just do the usual housekeeping rules. If you’ve got a mobile phone, can you switch it onto ‘silent’, please? We’re not expecting the fire alarm to operate; if it does, we’ll take our instructions from the ushers. We operate bilingually, so, translation is available from Welsh into English—it’s channel 1 for the translation and channel 0 for floor amplification, should you need it.
[2] We’ve got a number of apologies this morning. We’ve apologies from Angela Burns, John Griffiths, and Lynne Neagle, and we also believe that Suzy Davies and Simon Thomas are running late due to the situation—there’s been a major road closure—so they will probably join us when they can.
09:34
Ymchwiliad i Waith Athrawon Cyflenwi—Sesiwn Dystiolaeth 7 Inquiry into Supply Teaching—Evidence Session 7
[3] Ann Jones: That said, we’ll move on to the inquiry that we’re doing into supply teaching. I’m delighted to have with us for this session what was previously known as the General Teaching Council for Wales, which is now the Education Workforce Council, so, thank you very much and thank you for your papers. Would you like to introduce yourselves for the record and then we’ll go straight into some questions, if we can?
[4] Ms Jardine: Bore da. I’m Angela Jardine, current chair of the Education Workforce Council.
[5] Mr Llewellyn: Good morning. My name’s Hayden Llewellyn, chief executive of the Education Workforce Council.
[6] Ann Jones: Thanks very much for that, and, as I say, thank you very much for your written evidence on this. So, if it’s all right, we’ve got a set of questions. So, if we can move straight into questions, we’ll see how we go. Aled, do you want to take the first set?
[7] Aled Roberts: Yes.
[8] Rwyf am ofyn yn Gymraeg. Rwyf jest eisiau gofyn hyn yn y lle cyntaf. Rydym wedi bod yn clywed gwahanol dystiolaeth ynglŷn â’r rhesymau pam mae athrawon cyflenwi yn cael eu defnyddio. Mae’ch tystiolaeth chi yn eithaf clir yn dweud bod absenoldeb oherwydd salwch yn creu galw o ryw 41 y cant, a bod y galw oherwydd trefniadau ar gyfer datblygiad proffesiynol rhyw 31 neu 32 y cant. Mae hynny, i ryw raddau, yn gwrthddweud y dystiolaeth gawson ni gan Brifysgol Cymru y Drindod Dewi Sant, er bod eu tystiolaeth nhw ar lafar yn dweud bod y sefyllfa’n eithaf cymhleth. Felly, rwyf eisiau gwybod sut yn union rydych chi wedi dod i’r casgliad bod absenoldeb ar gyfer salwch ryw 41 y cant. Pa dystiolaeth sydd gennych chi i gyfiawnhau y ffigwr yna?		I’ll be asking my questions in Welsh. I just want to ask this in the first place. We’ve been hearing various evidence about the reasons why supply teachers are used. Your evidence is quite clear in stating that absences due to sickness create a demand of some 41 per cent, and that the demand because of continuous professional development arrangements are about 31 or 32 per cent. That, to some extent, goes against the evidence that we received from University of Wales Trinity Saint David, although their oral evidence stated that the situation was quite complex. So, I want to know how exactly you have come to the conclusion that absence because of sickness is around 41 per cent. What evidence do you have to justify that figure?
[9] Ms Jardine: Mi wnaf ofyn i Hayden i ddechrau achos mae’n dod allan o survey arbennig.		Ms Jardine: I will ask Hayden to start because it comes from a specific survey.
[10] Mr Llewellyn: Good morning to you all. You’ll be aware that the General Teaching Council for Wales, now the Education Workforce Council, undertook a survey on behalf of the Welsh Government relating to supply teachers in May 2014. We’re really the only national body in Wales that works directly with supply teachers and with supply agencies. So, we’ve a good relationship and a good feel for the issues out there. The survey was of over 4,500 supply teachers and we had a response rate of 41 per cent, so it was over 2,000 supply teachers who actually responded. So, it was a statistically valid survey. In terms of the results, they were clear, as Aled has said there. So, over 40 per cent, the main reason for undertaking supply work, did relate to sickness, closely followed by continuous professional development. So, a statistically valid survey; clear evidence there. That is backed up anecdotally by the work that we do with the 40 supply agencies in Wales on a daily basis, and also the direct relationships we have with those supply teachers. So, our feeling is that that evidence is clear and strong.
[11] Aled Roberts: Rydym hefyd wedi clywed bod lefelau absenoldeb staff yng Nghymru yn uwch na’r cyfartaledd yn Lloegr a’r Alban. A oes gennych chi unrhyw safbwyntiau ar lefelau absenoldeb, ac a allwch chi egluro pam mae’r patrwm yn wahanol, neu’n waeth, yng Nghymru nag yn y gwledydd cyfagos?		Aled Roberts: We have also heard that levels of staff absence in Wales are higher than the average in England and Scotland. Do you have any views on levels of absence, and can you explain why the pattern differs, or is worse in Wales than in neighbouring countries?
[12] Ms Jardine: Nid wyf yn meddwl bod gennym ni dystiolaeth; nid ydym wedi gwneud gwaith sy’n cymharu’r lefelau yn y ddwy wlad. Felly, o ran fy marn i—nid wyf yn gwybod a oes gan Hayden rywbeth arall i’w ychwanegu—nid yw’r gwaith yna wedi cael ei wneud gennym ni beth bynnag.		Ms Jardine: I don’t think that we have that evidence; we haven’t done any work to compare the levels in the two countries. So, in terms of my personal opinion—I don’t know whether Hayden has anything to add to it—that work hasn’t been done by us at least.
[13] Mr Llewellyn: Yes, I would concur with that. I think the data and the evidence base are a little bit limited in this area and it is an area for the further exploration. Of course, there are some data about sickness levels in Wales and some comparisons with England, but I think that some more work needs to be done just to monitor that and try and identify the reasons. Human resources issues to do with sickness, of course, in other industries are fairly well-known, and in terms of identifying solutions, it’s been looked at elsewhere. So, I think it is an area that does need to be looked at, but it does appear to be the prime reason in Wales why supply teachers are used, and that’s unplanned absence as compared to planned absence, which is the CPD, so they’re two very different things.
[14] Aled Roberts: Rydych wedi sôn am ddiwydiannau gwahanol, neu broffesiynau gwahanol. Rwy’n meddwl mai beth sydd wedi’n synnu ni fel pwyllgor yw bod nifer o’r undebau wedi dweud mai bach iawn yw nifer y cyfarfodydd rhwng uwch-reolwyr o fewn ysgolion â staff sy’n dychwelyd, a bod patrwm cymysg. Ac o achos hynny, hwyrach nad oes ymwybyddiaeth ynglŷn â’r rhesymau pam. Yn amlwg, os oes problemau o fewn yr ysgol, byddech yn disgwyl i gamau gael eu cymryd. Beth yw’ch profiad chi o’r cyfarfodydd yma wrth i staff ddychwelyd? A ydych chi’n teimlo bod y sefyllfa—. Ac efo pwy mae’r cyfrifoldeb? A ddylai’r consortia neu’r awdurdodau lleol ei gwneud hi’n ofynnol ar brifathrawon i gynnal y cyfarfodydd yma?		Aled Roberts: You have talked about different industries, or different professions. I think that what surprised us as a committee was that a number of unions said that the number of meetings between senior managers in schools and returning staff is very small, and that there is a mixed pattern. And because of that, perhaps, there may not be an awareness of the reasons behind the absence. Obviously, if there are problems within the school, you’d expect steps to be taken. What is your experience of these meetings when staff return to work? Do you feel that the situation—. And who has the responsibility? Should the consortia or local authorities make it mandatory for headteachers to carry out these meetings?
[15] Ms Jardine: O ran ein rôl ni, nid yw hynny yn dod o dan beth rydym yn ei wneud, ond mae’n fwy anecdotal,  byddwn i’n ei ddweud, ac mae’r sefyllfa allan yn yr ysgolion yn newid o ysgol i ysgol ac o sir i sir hefyd. Ond beth fyddem ni’n ei ddweud fel cyngor ydy bod angen nid jest gweithio allan beth ydy’r broblem, achos mae nifer fawr o ddiwrnodau’n cael eu colli i salwch, ond edrych o dan hynny neu y tu ôl i hynny i weld beth ydy’r achosion. Er mwyn gwneud ein gorau ar gyfer y plant, a’u bod nhw’n cael cysondeb, mae’n rhaid edrych beth ydy’r achosion. Rwy’n meddwl mai ein barn ni ydy bod yn rhaid gwneud lot mwy o waith i weithio allan beth sydd yn achosi’r nifer uchel o salwch yma.		Ms Jardine: In terms of our role, that doesn’t come under the auspices of our organisation, but it’s more anecdotal, I would say, and the situation out in the schools changes from school to school and from county to county as well. But what we would say as a council is that there needs to be not just a way of working out what the problem is, because a great many days are lost to sickness absence, but of looking under that or behind that to see what the underlying reasons are. In order to do our best for the children, and so that they have that consistency, we do have to look at the causes of those absences. I think our opinion would be that a great deal more work needs to be done to work out what does cause that high number of absences.
[16] Aled Roberts: Rwy’n meddwl bod nifer ohonom ni’n synnu, o achos yr holl sylw sy’n cael ei roi i godi cyrhaeddiad plant, fod y fath batrwm wedi datblygu dros y blynyddoedd a’n bod wedi creu sefyllfa lle mae dros 10 y cant o’r gwersi erbyn hyn yn cael eu cyflawni gan athrawon cyflenwi.		Aled Roberts: I think that many of us were surprised, because of all the attention that is given to raising the attainment of children, to see that such a pattern has developed over the years and that we’ve created a situation where over 10 per cent of lessons are now taken by supply teachers.
[17] Wrth droi at y staff eu hunain, sef eich cyfrifoldeb chi, i ryw raddau, a oes gennych chi unrhyw bryderon, achos rŷm ni wedi cynnal cyfarfodydd efo penaethiaid, ac, yn amlwg, y prif grwpiau sy’n cael eu defnyddio fel staff cyflenwi ydy un ai staff sydd wedi dewis mynd yn rhan amser, staff sydd ar ddiwedd eu gyrfa, neu wedi ymddeol, hwyrach, neu staff sydd yn newydd i’r proffesiwn? Wrth ystyried y staff newydd yna, a oes gennych chi unrhyw bryderon nad ydyn nhw’n cael y gefnogaeth, ac, ar yr ochr arall, fod y staff sy’n diweddu eu gyrfa, hwyrach, ddim yn cadw i fyny efo datblygiad proffesiynol ac o achos hynny fod plant ar eu colled?		Turning to the staff themselves, who are your responsibility, to some extent, do you have any concerns, because we’ve had meetings with headteachers, and, obviously, the main groups that are used as supply staff are either staff who have chosen to go part time, staff are coming to the end of their career, or have retired, possibly, or staff who are new to the profession? In considering those newly qualified staff, do you have any concerns that they do not receive the support and, on the other hand, that the staff who are coming to the end of their career may not be up to date with professional development and that, as a result, children are losing out?
[18] Ms Jardine: Rwy’n meddwl bod ein ffigurau ni yn eithaf clir am hyn. Mae’r ystadegau’n gryf ac yn cefnogi beth rydych chi wedi’i ddweud mai’r bobl newydd i’r proffesiwn a’r bobl sydd ar ddiwedd eu gyrfa, mewn ffordd, sydd yn gwneud i fyny y rhan fwyaf o’n hathrawon cyflenwi. Gofynnaf nawr i Hayden, sydd â’r ystadegau wrth law fan hyn, i ateb yn fwy manwl.		Ms Jardine: I think that our figures are quite clear about this. The statistics are very robust and support what you’ve just said that it’s the people who are new to the profession and the people who are at the end of their careers, as it were, who make up the majority of our supply teachers. I’ll now ask Hayden, who has the statistics to hand, to respond in more detail.
[19] Mr Llewellyn: In terms of the statistics, the data here are very clear over a number of years from our register. Those two groups account for around about 75 per cent of supply teachers—the newly qualified teachers and those towards the end of their career. You need to treat them separately, I think. In terms of the first group, the newly qualified teachers, we have the strong view that something can be done to strengthen the current position in this area. We think, and you do see it in some other countries and some other professions, that there would seem to be an opportunity to appoint NQTs on a more permanent basis to cover a cluster of schools. You see it in other industries: you see it in banking, you see it with doctors and you see it with pharmacists, for example. They could be appointed, maybe on a two-year contract or a three-year contract, specifically to cover a bunch of schools. What you see there is that you get continuity in the pupil learning. You can also then start to look at arrangements in terms of CPD for those people and other opportunities in terms of reasonable rates of pay as well. But, it seems to be, perhaps, an area to look at. As I say, it works in other industries and it would give those newly qualified teachers a more substantive job. They’d meet the induction standard more quickly and they’d start to make an impact and give a benefit to the education system more quickly. It does seem an obvious area to start to investigate, I think. There would be wins for the NQTs, wins for the pupils, wins for the school.
[20] Ms Jardine: It might be worth mentioning the number that are involved early in the profession. It’s quite stark, isn’t it?
[21] Mr Llewellyn: Yes. The figures that we hold in terms of induction—. If you look at those who work towards practising teacher standards, over 80 cent currently are on fixed-term or supply contracts. That is a startling statistic: under 20 per cent only have permanent contracts in their first couple of years of teaching. It’s really an unbelievable statistic and we feel that something can be done here, whether you’re in one school or whether you work on a supply basis.
[22] Aled Roberts: Os ydych chi’n dweud bod 80 y cant o athrawon newydd gymhwyso ddim ar gytundeb parhaol, mae’r NASUWT wedi dweud bod 82 y cant o athrawon newydd gymhwyso heb dderbyn lefel y gefnogaeth y bydden nhw’n ei disgwyl. Felly, mae’r patrwm yn eithaf brawychus, i ddweud y gwir. Os ydych chi’n dweud bod yna wledydd lle mae athrawon newydd gymhwyso wedi eu cyflogi fel rhan o grwpiau o ysgolion, a ydyn nhw’n cael eu cyflogi gan awdurdodau yn y sefyllfa honno, neu gan ysgolion ar y cyd? Achos un o’r cymhlethdodau yn yr holl gyfundrefn yma ydy’r cwestiwn o ran pwy sy’n mynd i dalu, a’r ffaith ein bod ni wedi rhannu’r arian i lawr i ysgolion unigol.		Aled Roberts: If you’re saying that 80 per cent of newly qualified teachers are not on a permanent contract, the NASUWT has said that 82 per cent of newly qualified teachers have not received the level of support that they would have expected. So, the pattern is quite frightening, really. If you’re saying that there are countries where NQTs have been employed by groups of schools, are they employed by the authorities in those situations, or by groups of schools? Because one of the complexities of this entire system is the question of who is going to pay, and the fact that we have delegated the funding down to individual schools.
09:45
[23] Mr Llewellyn: I think in terms of the way forward with supply teachers there would seem to be probably about four different models. One is that supply pools are arranged through the local authorities, which was the case before, and has been tried. Another one is what we currently have in Wales: it’s predominantly run by private supply agencies. So, those two have been tried, and there are issues with both. In terms of other solutions—and you’ll see these in some other countries—the options would seem to be that you have a central pool, maybe run by Government or another organisation, or possibly consortia have a role to play. So, similar to the local authority model, but done at a higher level. So there would seem to be different ways of doing it there. But the key with all of those models is to have a good strong framework in place: clear CPD arrangements, identified confirmed rates of pay, and so on and so on.
[24] It seems to be that what we currently have isn’t quite right, and it’s looking at which solution would best fit Wales. As I mentioned, you will see different models in different countries. In Northern Ireland, for example, they have a single central register called the Northern Ireland Substitute Teacher Register that’s run by Government, and trade unions had a very strong involvement in setting that up. In Scotland, you see the arrangements still through local authorities, albeit there are still some concerns by unions in terms of rates of pay there. There are lots of different models out there, but it’s trying to find the right model that works best for Wales, but most importantly getting the clear framework underpinning it that Government and Wales want in terms of rates of pay, CPD, and so on.
[25] Ann Jones: I’ve got David wanting to come in, and then Simon.
[26] Aled Roberts: Can I have one last one?
[27] Ann Jones: One last one, and then I’ll go to David and Simon. Okay.
[28] Aled Roberts: O ran y fframwaith—rydych wedi sôn am y fframwaith—mae Llywodraeth Cymru, yn amlwg, wedi penderfynu eu bod nhw’n ail-wneud y fframwaith presennol ar amodau gwahanol. A gawsoch chi unrhyw fath o fewnbwn i gwestiynau o ran ansawdd o ran y cytundeb newydd, fel cyngor?		Aled Roberts: In terms of the framework—and you have mentioned it—the Welsh Government has obviously decided that they are going to redo the current framework, with different conditions. Did you have any input in terms of quality with regard to the new contract, as a council?
[29] Ms Jardine: Na chawsom.		Ms Jardine: No, we didn’t.
[30] Mr Llewellyn: No, we had no involvement in it, but as an organisation, as I’ve mentioned already, we’ve always worked very closely with supply agencies in Wales. When GTCW was formed, we worked with 12 agencies. We’ve seen that expand to now over 40 agencies operating in Wales. We’ve also always traditionally worked with the Recruitment and Employment Confederation accreditation scheme, which is operated out of England, so we have good understandings of these areas, but we weren’t involved directly in the development of that framework.
[31] Ann Jones: David and Simon, still on this first set.
[32] David Rees: Thank you, Chair. It’s this question of CPD. When the Education (Wales) Bill was put together, which we all experienced, and created the Education Workforce Council, the question of CPD did arise, very much, and the responsibilities of the Education Workforce Council with regard to that. In your evidence, you’ve indicated, obviously, that the Public Accounts Committee’s looking at supply teaching, and you support the two recommendations that it has made, and you’ve also identified that you will assist the Welsh Government. Are you actually being proactive in developing CPD? One of my beliefs is that the EWC should be looking at how to develop CPD opportunities for people, not simply sitting at the back and waiting for someone else to do it.
[33] Ms Jardine: Do you want to take that?
[34] Mr Llewellyn: You’ll well know that, in the development of the Act and the remit of EWC, in terms of providing advice to Government, we’re only able to publish advice at the agreement of the Welsh Government, and any advice we do undertake we have to report that to the Welsh Government every two months. So, our advisory remit, compared to the previous remit of GTCW, has been narrowed. That said, we are working with Welsh Government officials in the area of CPD at the moment. You’ll know that we’ve been asked to take forward the development of a professional learning passport, or e-portfolio, which will be a significant trigger and incentive to encourage teachers and other support staff to undertake CPD, record it and reflect on it. So, I think in terms of the early days of the development of the new deal, I think we will see situations where the EWC has been asked to be involved in these areas, but it’s early days at the moment.
[35] David Rees: As you’ve highlighted, you’ve got 70 per cent of two different groups, effectively. Are you therefore looking at different models and approaches to CPD depending on which groups people would reside in? I’m particularly concerned about the newly qualified teachers.
[36] Mr Llewellyn: My personal view would be that it would absolutely have to be a case of horses for courses. We’ve talked a little bit about the NQTs already, and, as I said, our preference would be that larger groups of NQTs are appointed on a more formal basis to, in effect, act as locums or relief teachers covering a cluster of schools. In terms of the other main group, those towards the end of their careers, I think it is a different solution. It’s clear that teachers and support staff, towards the end of their careers, want to move more to a part-time basis, because essentially that’s what supply is. I think there seems to be an area, again, to look at there in terms of whether it could be possible for teachers, increasingly, through choice, to move towards part-time contracts towards the end of their career. By doing that, then, the CPD would take care of itself, because they would be in individual schools. So, the current CPD arrangements would be more visible, transparent and ready there for them. So, it’s a different solution, I think, for each of those two groups.
[37] Ms Jardine: I think one of the key roles that we can play is to use the strength of the register, because I think key to all this is understanding who are the supply teachers, where are they, what are their qualifications, and what are their age profiles. There’s more work that can be done on that. So, in defining the next steps or what you’d like to see happen, I’d encourage you to seek advice from our register, and interrogate that. We can bring forward individual advice at your request as well. I think once you have a clear picture of who these individuals are who are involved in supply teaching, we can then start to glean ideas about what their individual needs are and maybe what groups of the population’s needs are.
[38] You’ll be aware that the vast majority of supply teachers, from our written evidence, are primary teachers, so they will have different needs, obviously, from those who are functioning in secondary. Although we haven’t registered them yet, we’re aware that these similar issues will apply for the support staff and certainly, to a lesser extent, in further education as well. We’re aware that there are supply agencies placing huge numbers of support staff in schools as well. I’d encourage you to look holistically as you work in the future, and to focus not just on the teachers, but everybody who’s involved in providing that continuity of education from the child’s perspective, as well.
[39] Ann Jones: Simon, you’re still waiting for a question.
[40] Simon Thomas: I think I can cover it when I come to the second set.
[41] Ann Jones: Okay. Keith on this particular point, then, and then I’ll come back to you.
[42] Keith Davies: Roeddech chi’n sôn yn fanna nawr am gael rhyw restr neu rywbeth, ond rŷch chi’n feirniadol iawn yn eich adroddiad am ddiffyg rheoli perfformiad athrawon cyflenwi. Sut y byddech chi’n sicrhau bod awdurdodau neu’r consortia rhanbarthol yn gwneud y pethau hyn er mwyn bod yna rywun yn gallu edrych ar y rhain? Oherwydd, beth sy’n digwydd nawr, rŷm ni’n ei glywed, yw bod athro neu athrawes yn perfformio’n wael mewn ysgol, gydag un o’r asiantaethau, ac wedyn maen nhw’n symud i un arall, wedyn. So, nid oes neb yn cadw golwg ar berfformiad yr athrawon cyflenwi.		Keith Davies: You spoke just now about having some sort of list or register or something, but you were very critical in your report about the lack of performance management for supply teachers. How would you ensure that authorities or the regional consortia do these things to ensure that someone can look at these? Because, what’s happening now, according to what we hear, is that teachers who perform badly in a school, with one of the agencies, they then just move on to a different agency. So, nobody’s keeping an eye on the performance of supply teachers.
[43] Ms Jardine: Wel, mae gennym ni ffigurau ynglŷn â’r rhai sy’n dod o’n blaenau ni fel cyngor, o ran ymddygiad neu berfformiad. Mae Hayden yn eu hadnabod nhw’n well na fi, felly rwy’n mynd i ofyn i Hayden i ddweud wrthych chi beth ydy beth am hynny.		Ms Jardine: Well, we have figures about the ones who come before us as a council, in terms of their conduct or performance. Hayden knows those better than me, so I’m going to ask Hayden to tell you what is what in that regard.
[44] Mr Llewellyn: Obviously, one of the roles of the Education Workforce Council, formerly the General Teaching Council for Wales, is to deal with disciplinary cases regarding teachers. In future, that’s now extending to FE and in-time support staff. Of the roughly 500 cases that have been referred to us since 2001, when we assumed this duty, 65 of those have related to supply teachers. Now, that’s been primarily conduct rather than competence or capability. But the percentage there is around about the 15 per cent mark. Those figures relate both to supply teachers working directly for agencies but also through local authorities as well, and, roughly, those referrals have been half and half between the two.
[45] Just adding a little bit to what Angela said there in terms of building clear performance management arrangements for supply teachers, I still think it’s about Wales deciding what system we want, going forward. I mentioned we’ve tried local authority pools, and we’re currently predominantly with agencies, but there seem to be some other options there: maybe consortia or maybe a single central body running a supply pool, like in Northern Ireland. As I’ve said already to Aled, I think the key to that is that Wales decides exactly what it wants from that system, then. An obvious requirement, as well as sensible pay rates and clear CPD, does seem to be a good performance management system built in, so targets are set, objectives are set, training is in place, and improvement is on a continuous basis, but I think—and we’ve said it a few times, now—getting that framework right so that everybody is happy with it is an absolute must.
[46] Ms Jardine: I think the benefits are there for the individual teacher as well as the profession as a whole. You know, it’s an entitlement, performance management, which can be, if it’s handled properly, a definite win-win situation for the profession, for the school, for the children and for the individuals themselves. So, it’s certainly something that we would welcome—and it is doable as well. Once you know who the people are and what their needs are, all of that can be built into the framework that you suggest going forward.
[47] Ann Jones: Okay. Bethan, on this point, and then—
[48] Bethan Jenkins: Just a quick point that came to my mind, in terms of what Estyn was saying about the procedures to report a supply teacher: they said they were satisfied that it would go to you, but do you have evidence where—because that is the extremity of the situation, where you get referred a teacher who actually could’ve been seen in a different manner—it should’ve gone to—? You know, for example, if they’re working in a school, they would’ve been seen by the leadership team, but, obviously, that’s not the case for the supply teachers. Do you have any evidence of that nature, or do you just deal with the cases because they come to you and you have to—that type of thing?
[49] Mr Llewellyn: It’s a really good point, actually, and some trade unions, notably UCAC, have raised it with us in the past. The way the legislation is written is that, if somebody parts company with an agency on a matter to do with conduct or competence, there’s a legal duty on the agency to refer. So, you are right, and we’ve seen a small number of instances where interventions could have taken place before the need to refer that person. That said, where we’ve had cases of that nature, it’s within the council’s ability to decide that there should be no further action or there’s no case to answer for that individual, and that has been the outcome of some cases that have been referred to us in relation to supply teachers, because of the difference to that employment arrangement. So, it’s a very well-made point, actually.
[50] Ann Jones: Simon, shall we come to your questions? I know that we’ve strayed into CPD performance questions, but I’ll come to yours and then I’ll move on to David after you.
[51] Simon Thomas: Diolch yn fawr. Rwyf jest eisiau deall yn gyntaf fwy ynglŷn â pha rôl y byddech chi’n ei chwarae yn y fargen newydd, fel y mae’n cael ei galw, ar gyfer athrawon, a’r model yma o ddysgu proffesiynol, a’r e-basbort yma sydd wedi cael ei ddodi i chi. Yn gyntaf oll, pa ffordd ŷch chi’n gweld y rôl sydd gyda chi fel cyngor yn hynny? Yn ail, ac yn fwy penodol wrth gwrs, ym mha ffordd y mae athrawon cyflenwi nawr yn cael eu cynnwys yn y model yna?		Simon Thomas: Thank you very much. I just want to understand, first of all, more about what kind of role you would play in the new deal, as it’s being called, for teachers, and this model of professional learning, and the e-passport that has been passed on to you. First of all, in what way do you see the role that you have been given as a council in that? Secondly, and more specifically, of course, in what way are supply teachers now being included in that model?
[52] Ms Jardine: Mae’r gwaith yn adeiladu ar rywbeth rŷm ni’n ei wneud ar hyn o bryd efo athrawon newydd. Rydym ni’n cadw portffolio ar eu cyfer nhw am y tro cyntaf ers blwyddyn, nawr, yn electronig, ac mae’n gysylltiedig â’n cofrestr ni hefyd, ac mae’r gwaith ynglŷn â’r e-basbort yn dod allan o hynny. Gwnaf i ofyn i Hayden esbonio ymhellach ym mhle yr ydym ni ar hyn o bryd, achos mae’r gwaith yn datblygu, ond mae’n ddyddiau cynnar.		Ms Jardine: The work builds on something that we’re doing at the moment with newly qualified teachers. We’re keeping a portfolio on their behalf for the first time, and have been for a year, now, which is held electronically and is also linked to our register, and the work in relation to the e-passport stems from that. I’ll ask Hayden to explain further where we’re at at the moment, because the work is developing, but it’s still quite early days.
[53] Mr Llewellyn: The GTW, as it was at the time, were asked to put in place from last September an online portfolio for NQTs. Previously, the portfolio had to be kept by NQTs in the school, but it was all on paper, and that was not very workable, so we were asked to link to the registers, as Angela said, and to put a portfolio in place from last September. The use of that portfolio included supply teachers. The usage of it is fantastic. Nearly 95 per cent of NQTs who started last September are using that online portfolio.
[54] We’ve been asked formally, now, by Government, to take that further forward, firstly, by having an initial version of the passport in place for this September, and then an enhanced version of passport ready for September 2016. Now, the passport will be available to all teachers, including supply teachers, but also all support staff and all further education lecturers as well, so its usage will be extensive, and the purpose will be—and it’s particularly important for supply teachers, actually—for it to stay with you. So, whether you move school, wherever you go, you record your CPD, you reflect on it, you plan using it, and so on. There’s some challenges in there for the council, in terms of encouraging usage and so on, but our strategy there is that, because it’ll, in effect, be mandatory for NQTs, because they have to maintain a profile anyway, we’ll build it up from the bottom.
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[55] So, over the coming years, the usage of the passport will increase, but it is a good initiative, through the new deal, and it’s a tremendous opportunity for people to record their CPD in one place and reflect on it. As I say, because of the transience of supply teachers, I think it will be probably more useful for supply teachers than any other group, actually.
[56] Simon Thomas: Rŷch chi’n dweud eich bod chi’n cynnal y pasbort yma, gan ddechrau gyda’r athrawon sydd newydd gymhwyso. A oes gyda chi unrhyw rôl yn goruchwylio hyfforddiant proffesiynol sy’n cael ei dderbyn fanna—cadw trac arno, er enghraifft, neu weld a oes yna gynnydd a gweld pa fath o CPD sy’n cael ei ddarparu—neu a ydych chi’n syml iawn jest yn cadw yn electronig, bron, y gofrestr? A ydy’r rôl yn mynd ymhellach na hynny?		Simon Thomas: You say that you maintain this passport, beginning with NQTs. Do you have any role in terms of the oversight of the professional training that is received there—by keeping track of it, for example, or looking to see whether there is any progress or looking to see what kind of CPD is provided—or do you just very simply keep the register, electronically, almost,? Does the role go any further than that?
[57] Ms Jardine: Hayden?
[58] Mr Llewellyn: A level of CPD is already recorded on the register of teachers now—induction, information about early professional development, the Masters in educational practice, the national professional qualification for headship, but also qualifications. So, there’s a level of information currently. One of the aims of the passport is to take that further and to record all forms of CPD, so not just the formal nationally accredited stuff but things you do in your school, things you do in your personal time and things you do as individual aspirations. So, Simon, to answer the question, we will record that formally in future and use the information for policy purposes and development. It’s not there currently, but it will come with the passport.
[59] Simon Thomas: A ydy hwn yn gam tuag at ddatblygu proffesiynol gorfodol fel rhan o gadw ar y gofrestr, achos mae cyswllt fan hyn rhwng yr e-basbort a’r gofrestr, ac mae yna drafod wedi bod—rŷch chi wedi trafod—ynghylch proffesiynau eraill a sut maen nhw’n gweithio? Mae’n amlwg yn y proffesiynau eraill yna fod gofyn i rywun wneud CPD bob dwy flynedd neu dair blynedd, neu beth bynnag yw e, a nodi hynny, cael y pwyntiau, a chadw, felly, ar y gofrestr broffesiynol. Nid oes dim byd tebyg i hynny i athrawon eto, ond a ydy hwn yn gam tuag at y fath yna o batrwm? Rwy’n deall bod yna beilot, er enghraifft, wedi bod yn yr Alban o’r fath yma.		Simon Thomas: Is this a step towards mandatory professional development to be able to stay on the register, because there is a link here between the e-passport and the register, and there have been discussions—you have mentioned them—about other professions and how they work? It is evident that those other professions have a requirement for someone to carry out CPD every two years, three years or whatever it is, and to note that, to get the points, and then to remain on the professional register. There is nothing similar to that for teachers as yet, but is this a step towards that kind of pattern? I understand that there’s been a pilot, for example, in Scotland.
[60] Ms Jardine: Beth y byddwn i’n ei ddweud ydy bod dysgu ac addysgu yn sefyll allan ymysg y proffesiynau eraill yn y ffaith ein bod ni ddim yn cael yr orfodaeth yma arnom ni, fel athrawon. Wrth gwrs, yn yr Alban, mae yna gyfle—‘professional update’ maen nhw’n galw hynny—lle maen nhw’n symud tuag at y system yna o recordio’r hyn y maen nhw wedi’i wneud er mwyn aros ar y gofrestr. Fan hyn, rydym ni ar ddechrau taith—nid ydym ni mor bell â hynny i lawr y ffordd, byddwn i’n ei ddweud, ag yw’r Alban. O’n plaid ni, rwy’n meddwl bod gyda ni gysylltiadau cryf iawn gyda’r cyrff yn y gwahanol wledydd, ac rydym ni’n gallu dysgu oddi wrthyn nhw a chydweithio er mwyn cyrraedd system fan hyn sydd yn arbennig ar gyfer athrawon Cymru, ond sy’n seiliedig ar y gorau o’r systemau eraill yn y proffesiynau eraill a hefyd yn y gwledydd eraill.		Ms Jardine: What I would say is that learning and teaching do stand out amongst the other professions in the fact that we don’t have this mandatory training as teachers. Of course, in Scotland, there is an opportunity—and they call it the ‘professional update’—where they are moving towards this kind of system of recording what they have done in order to remain on the register. Here, we are at the start of the journey—we’re not as far along that route as they are in Scotland, I would say. From our point of view, in our favour, we do have very strong links with the bodies in the different countries, and we can learn from them and collaborate with them to get to a system here that is tailored to the teachers of Wales, but which is also based on best practice from the other systems in the different professions and also in the different countries.
[61] I don’t know whether you want to add anything, Hayden.
[62] Mr Llewellyn: Yes, please. It’s something, Simon, I’m sure you know is very common in other professions, and Angela mentioned that mandatory CPD has now been introduced in Scotland. So, it’s very, very common, and, certainly, when we’ve been working to register FE lecturers for the first time, a number of the persons working in FE have had previous careers, whether in engineering, or nursing, or law or whatever it might be. It’s one of the most common questions I get asked: ‘Will there be mandatory CPD, because it’s what I’m used to in my previous occupation?’ The bottom line would be it would need a legislative change by Government if CPD were to be mandatory for teachers, support staff and FE lecturers in Wales, but, as Angela said, we’re quite early in our development compared with other professions and other professional bodies.
[63] Ms Jardine: I’d also say that, before that happens, there’s going to be a need to make sure that it’s not just a case of noting hours, because that’s not going to be beneficial at all. If we’re talking about improving a system and improving outcomes for children, as well as the individuals who are in the profession, it’s got to be quality assured, it’s got to be available consistently throughout the country, and it’s got to be available, we would say, to all those involved in the education workforce, as well, on an equal basis. So, we would need to be reassured that, before any moves to a mandatory system occurred, it was going to be worth while and it was going to be beneficial.
[64] Simon Thomas: That’s where I wanted to go next: to focus on the supply teacher side, because in your evidence you note considerable hours—something like 80,000, I think—noted by supply teachers, but only 50, or fewer than 50, actually, have come through the whole process since 2012 and become PTS; you know, a practising teacher. The oral evidence that we took from supply teachers themselves informally also pointed to how difficult it was, as a newly qualified teacher, to do that within the time allowed, but also how much depended on the goodwill of schools. So, in one school, they would be allowed to take part in the CPD that the school was running; in another school, it wouldn’t happen. That inconsistency around a significant percentage of our teaching profession is surely, if not a problem now, a ticking timebomb in terms of maintaining that CPD throughout the profession and throughout the year. So, is there a specific thing that can be done now to address that missing link around supply teachers? I’m very clear—my personal view is that we should have a national agency and that could work and support those, but we’ll come to that when we come to the conclusions of the report, I’m sure. But, at the moment, what kind of things can we put in there to give what you just referred to—the equality of the training field for supply teachers and those in full-time permanent jobs?
[65] Mr Llewellyn: Simon, on the figures you referred to there, I’ll just top you up on the latest figures for that before we answer the question. The induction arrangements for the practising teacher standards changed in September 2012, and that was the first opportunity where a supply teacher could work towards those standards. Previously, they couldn’t. So, that was when the change happened. As at yesterday, 2,120 people have started the induction since that date and have now completed. Of those, only 3.8 per cent—81 people—have done that through a supply teacher route only. There have been some additional people who have done a mix of supply and fixed-term contracts, but still the number that have done it purely through a supply route is extremely low. The bottom line, and the challenge for those people, is to undertake work that actually counts towards those practising teacher standards, because very often the work they’re being called into schools to do is of a cover, supervisory nature. So, the—
[66] Simon Thomas: The example was school trips.
[67] Mr Llewellyn: Absolutely.
[68] Simon Thomas: As a supply teacher, you don’t go on a school trip, but you need to go on a school trip to demonstrate that for your professional standards.
[69] Mr Llewellyn: That’s it. So, they’re not meeting the standards. So, there’s a first challenge there. In terms of your question about what CPD they could be given, unfortunately these would have to be temporary solutions before Wales bites the bullet to move to something different. You know, we’ve talked about LEA pools, we’ve talked about agencies and we’ve talked about two other options, but it’s trying to maximise what we’ve got, I think. Induction does provide some opportunities, but there seem to be other areas: tapping into school INSET, having information available that they can use to undertake their own CPD, but also putting a greater onus, I think, on agencies as well. Some agencies do provide CPD, but there are many, in our experience, that don’t. So, it’s trying to get more out of what we currently have because it’s very clear that supply teachers do not get the same opportunities, CPD-wise, that substantive teachers do.
[70] Simon Thomas: Is online an answer at all?
[71] Mr Llewellyn: Yes, I think so; very much. There are some things available at the moment, such as Hwb and Learning Wales, that I think are underutilised, really. So, I think there are opportunities there to make these facilities that are there more readily available and known to supply teachers. But sometimes, in fairness to supply teachers, particularly the NQTs, their priority is to just get work and get started and start to work their way into the profession. So, it really needs to be made quite easy for them to tap into CPD, because their priority is just to get a foothold in the career and get some work.
[72] Ms Jardine: Yes. It’s a lost opportunity, as well, isn’t it, because, obviously, there’s been a lot of money invested in training those individuals? If they’re not able to secure work and the next steps in their development, then that’s a loss to us as a society as well. It’s really important that we try and address that.
[73] I was going to say, in regards to accessing a lot of the e-learning that’s out there, one difficulty that supply teachers have sometimes now is that what is available is difficult for them to access because they’re not attached to a school or a local authority. So, even some things as basic as a secure e-mail address that allows them to log onto these systems is a problem.
[74] Simon Thomas: Well, for example, supply teachers are directly contacting me saying that they can’t get access to Hwb through those schools.
[75] Ms Jardine: Yes. But in the future, with the link to the learning passport—and this is something that I think is going to be effective—if it’s being accessed via their registration, that will be their key to any repository of learning that they’re able to access for their own personal study, so I think that’s another improvement that can come on the basis of using the register linked to the learning passport.
[76] Mr Llewellyn: Certainly in Scotland, what you do see is Government, the professional body and various agencies being clever in working together. So, if you look at the General Teaching Council for Scotland website, for example, you see the key information and deliverables for teachers all in one place. The standards are very prominent; the code is very prominent; access to the current version of the portfolio passport is there; links to certain CPD opportunities through other agencies—it’s all in one place. Because that’s the professional body of the teachers and they have to use the register, it’s pointing everybody in the right direction—
[77] Ms Jardine: It’s the same direction as well.
[78] Mr Llewellyn: We think that, working with Government officials, we can do more in terms of when the passport comes onstream in this area to have better linkage between all the new initiatives through the new deal.
[79] I’d just like to go, Simon, back to one point that you raised in terms of supply teachers. We’ve raised it a couple of times already, but we do think that there could be real wins by local authorities employing supply teachers to cover a cluster of schools, because it would aid the pupil continuity in terms of learning, the CPD opportunities could then come onstream, and these newly qualified teachers could have more substantive posts. It works in other industries, but it does seem to be something that could work here in Wales.
[80] Simon Thomas: Presumably through the consortia, then.
[81] Mr Llewellyn: It could well work through the consortia, yes.
[82] Ms Jardine: Or a national body. The key for us is that you need to decide upon a system, then decide upon who’s going to operate that system and then place requirements on them in terms of performance managing and making sure there is an entitlement to CPD as well for those people.
[83] Ann Jones: Okay. I’ve got a number of people now. I’ve got David, Keith and Aled. David, on this issue and then we’ll move on to—
[84] David Rees: Going on to CPD and performance management—
[85] Ann Jones: Yes, we’re on CPD and performance management, and then—
[86] David Rees: I’ve got one simple question on performance management. Clearly, there’s been a lot of concern over this. We talked about CPD, which basically is a consequence of proper needs analysis and performance management. What’s your view on the quality of performance management that you are currently seeing for supply staff, both at school level and perhaps at supply agency level?
[87] Ms Jardine: I think our first concern is that it doesn’t happen for everybody. The entitlement isn’t there. As an individual, you’d like to feel that you’ve had the opportunity to discuss your development and to discuss what you might need to help you further develop and how you can contribute to the schools that you’re employed in as well. So, that’s the first concern. Then, in terms of there being a national way that that’s done, I think that our evidence is that it’s inconsistent—the opportunities. That’s from the casework that comes before us as a council. You’ll see that, sometimes, as Bethan was mentioning earlier, if a different method of performance management had come into place and the support was offered, the teacher might have found themselves in a different position. I don’t know if you want to add anything.
[88] Mr Llewellyn: Please, yes. I think we can be very clear on this one that we’ve had a move in Wales away from supply pools increasingly now, almost predominantly, to agencies. I mentioned earlier that, when the General Teaching Council for Wales was first formed, we dealt with 12 supply agencies and that we are now dealing with over 40. A new one contacted us last week and came on board. We weren’t aware of it. It’s a brand-new agency operating. So, we’ve had a massive increase in agencies. The industry in Wales is not really regulated. A small number of those agencies, around about half a dozen, are regulated through the Recruitment and Employment Confederation scheme in England, but the bulk are not quality assured or regulated. Therefore, what you’re seeing is no guarantee in terms of performance management arrangements. The bottom line is that the bulk of those teachers are now working through agencies rather than local authorities. They’re not being quality assured and there aren’t performance management arrangements and CPD in place for them. So, that’s why we’ve said that, in terms of whatever system Wales moves to in the future, the framework needs to be there. The pay needs to be clear, the CPD, the performance management—all of those things—need to be what Wales wants. At the moment, the industry is regulated, but the bulk of the agencies are not REC members.
[89] David Rees: Can I therefore take the view that your view is that a large proportion of supply teachers are actually being disadvantaged because of the lack of performance management that they’re experiencing?
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[90] Ms Jardine: I think they are, as individuals, but also, I think the profession as a whole is. We’re underselling what we can offer them.
[91] David Rees: And the pupils as a consequence, then.
[92] Ms Jardine: Well, that is it, you know. Our position very much is looking at it from how you support an improving system, and this isn’t the way to do it, the way we currently have, because the support isn’t there.
[93] Mr Llewellyn: I think it’s also going again back to the point we’ve raised a number of times about being clear who those supply teachers are. They’re two groups. They’re NQTs looking to get permanent jobs. So, that period of time when they’re not getting that performance management and CPD lasts until they get that permanent job, but, as we’ve said, one solution, or two solutions, to that might be that they’re either employed centrally to cover a number of schools, but also any new arrangement for supply teachers as a framework gives them that performance management from day one. So, there’s a solution there.
[94] In terms of the other big group, which are those towards the end of their careers, they, of course, have had a lot of CPD and a lot of performance management through their careers. So, you’re talking about people now who are doing a few years before they finish their careers. As we’ve said, one option might be for that group that we encourage greater part-time working, so that they stay on the books of their school or schools for a longer time and stay within those performance management arrangements. So, there are a few different solutions there, but it’s really deciding what we want next in terms of how we manage supply teachers. Is it a single pool like in Northern Ireland? Is it done through consortia or local authorities, or is it one of the methods we’ve already tried or are trying?
[95] Ms Jardine: I think, in terms of CPD as well, it’s underlining the difference between continuing professional development and training, because there is a duty to provide training to enable people to do a basic level, which everybody should have that entitlement to. But we would also argue that there’s an entitlement for a wider breadth of professional development as well.
[96] Ann Jones: Okay. We’re at a point where I now say we’re still on the second set of questions. I’ve got Keith and Aled with two points and then we’ll move on to quality assurance and to David. But we’ve got about a quarter of an hour, so, it’s short questions and short answers, please. Keith.
[97] Keith Davies: Hayden, you’ve talked about consortia and the Northern Ireland model, but you’ve also talked about the regulation of the private agencies. In your report to us, you actually say that there’s at least one of the private agencies that has a full CPD support system for the teachers it uses for supply. Is it only one of those? You were also saying that we should regulate them.
[98] Mr Llewellyn: The agency that I was referring to there you’ll be meeting very shortly, so, I’m sure they’ll be able to talk about what they do. I wouldn’t say that I know, hand on heart, it’s a completely comprehensive system, but there are things that are done that are more comprehensive than a number of the other agencies. Certainly, if you acquire REC membership through the England-based system, you are required to provide certain things, but, as I say, the vast majority of the agencies—over 80 per cent—have no regulation or no quality assurance currently in Wales. That seems to be something that isn’t sustainable, really.
[99] Keith Davies: Fine, thank you.
[100] Ann Jones: Okay. Aled?
[101] Aled Roberts: Jest er mwyn imi ddeall, os ydym ni’n symud at fodel gwahanol ac yn meddwl naill ai am asiantaeth genedlaethol neu i’w wneud trwy gonsortia, rydym wedi clywed tystiolaeth gan athrawon cyflenwi’n dweud bod yn rhaid ichi fod ar restr pob awdurdod unigol a rhaid, hefyd, ichi gael prawf CRB ym mhob awdurdod unigol. Os ydym ni’n newid y model, a fuasai’n rhaid inni gael newid yn y Ddeddf ar gyfer y ffordd y mae’r athrawon hynny’n cael eu cyflogi?		Aled Roberts: Just to understand, if we’re moving towards a different model and we’re thinking either about a national agency or doing it through consortia, we’ve heard evidence from supply teachers to say that you have to be on the register of every individual authority and you also have to have a CRB check for every authority. So, if we’re changing the model, would we have to have a change in the Act for the way that those teachers are employed?
[102] Ms Jardine: There is a possibility now, isn’t there, of having a DBS check, which stays with you, for a fee of, I think, £14.50 or something like that, every year. So, there is a growing number of registrants who are choosing to do that, because of the nature of the work. Obviously, it makes financial sense for them to pay the one fee annually, rather than pay for individual checks if they’re working in different authorities.
[103] In terms of the legal basis, I don’t know if you’ve got anything to add, Hayden.
[104] Mr Llewellyn: It’s possible that it may require something there. The key point for me would be who the employer would be. Currently, there are regular squabbles between agencies and schools as to who the actual employer is and that has run on for a number of years and there have been changes, but you’re absolutely right; I think, in any new system, the definition would have to be clear as to who the employer would be. I think positives, though, could come with that as well, notably in terms of pay. One of the common arguments, certainly by unions in terms of the current agency-led system, is that, certainly compared to salaries in England, supply teachers in Wales are not getting a decent salary, compared with what they could be getting and some agencies are taking a cut of that. So, one of the big opportunities for a new system, whether through a central agency or through consortia, is that the balance is redressed there in terms of salary. But, I think you are right in terms of who the employer would be would need to be defined. But I don’t think that would be difficult.
[105] Ann Jones: Okay. We’ll move on to quality assurance. David.
[106] David Rees: I have two quick questions. You’ve answered a lot of questions on quality assurance already, but I will come back to that last point about who the employer is, because when we heard from supply teachers, it was quite interesting to identify that they might have had a contract with an agency, but they were actually being paid by a different company, which may be an arm’s-length agency. So, in a sense, how do we ensure that that type of scenario, which I call ‘umbrella companies’ effectively, doesn’t actually impact on the quality and provision and on the continual professional development aspects and the responsibilities of an agency?
[107] Mr Llewellyn: The key, again, for me is setting out that framework and this is where the legal eagles would come in in terms of getting the employment situation right, I think. But, it’s all about getting that framework: what’s the pay, what’s the CPD entitlement, what’s the performance management arrangement, who the employer is and so on? In Northern Ireland, with the Northern Ireland substitute teachers’ register scheme and the single register, the employer, according to my understanding, is Government. That was set up by the Department for Education, working with the unions. In Northern Ireland now, they’ve moved from four or five library boards or local authorities to a single employer; so, there is a central employer. So, the same sort of thing might work in Wales.
[108] David Rees: Obviously, whilst we look at that type of model and we consider that, we’re working with the agencies that we currently have. You identified regulation; do you think the Recruitment and Employment Confederation, or a Welsh version of the REC, is the right way of putting that quality assurance stamp on them or is there something we need to tighten that is even stronger than that?
[109] Mr Llewellyn: I think that if the decision of Wales was to move to a central body co-ordinating supply, part of the work of that organisation would be the quality assurance side. Alternatively, if it was maybe done through consortia, there might be a role for another body in terms of the quality assurance of that. So, it really depends on the model we move to. But, in terms of the current agency model, it does seem to be an issue in terms of quality assurance. As I’ve said, we’ve gone from a dozen agencies to over 40. Only about half a dozen have REC assurance, and that’s an England-based scheme. Really, I think that if we are to continue with agencies, it would be beneficial to have a Wales-based scheme. Certainly, the number of supply teachers has been pretty static since the General Teaching Council for Wales has recorded data on supply teachers; it’s always been consistently around about 5,000 supply teachers on the register. So, they may, on occasions, be being used more or less over the years, but the number has sustained around the 5,000 mark.
[110] Ann Jones: Okay. Bethan, do you want to do Welsh-medium, then I’ll ask Suzy to come in after?
[111] Bethan Jenkins: Pan wnaethom siarad efo rhai o’r athrawon cyflenwi yn anffurfiol, roedd un yn siarad Cymraeg ac roedd yn dweud wrthym bod yr asiantaethau, yn amlwg, yn ei ffonio’n weddol aml oherwydd prinder pobl a oedd yn siarad Cymraeg. Weithiau, roeddent yn trio heicio’r ffi iddo fe, er mwyn iddo fynd i rywle nad oedd yn gallu ei gyrraedd mewn da bryd, jest gan nad oedd rhywun arall ar gael i wneud hynny, hyd yn oed os nad oedd yn gymwys—er enghraifft, ddim yn athro uwchradd, ond yn athro cynradd. Pa fath o dystiolaeth rydych wedi’i chael ynglŷn â’r math yma o bethau’n digwydd?		Bethan Jenkins: When we talked to some supply teachers informally, one of them spoke Welsh and he told us that the agencies, obviously, would phone him quite often because there was a lack of Welsh speakers. Sometimes, they would try to hike up the fee for him to get him to go somewhere he couldn’t easily get to, simply because there was nobody else available to do that, even if he was not qualified—for example, not a secondary-school teacher, but a primary-school teacher. So, what kind of evidence have you received about these kinds of things happening?
[112] Ms Jardine: O ran anecdote, rydym yn clywed, bob hyn a hyn, gan ambell i berson, ac mae’r undebau’n dweud yr un storïau wrthym hefyd. Ond, yn bwrpasol, nid ydym yn mynd i mewn i’r pethau yma rydym yn eu clywed. Beth sydd gennym ar y gofrestr hefyd ydy gallu’r athrawon a lefel eu gallu i siarad Cymraeg a’u hyder i ddysgu drwy gyfrwng y Gymraeg hefyd, achos mae yna wahaniaeth yn hynny. Felly, rydym yn gwybod lle mae’r athrawon sydd yn hapus i ddysgu drwy’r Gymraeg hefyd. Byddwn i’n gallu rhoi rhyw enghreifftiau o le mae’r rhan fwyaf o’r rheini yn sefyll, hefyd, o ran lle maen nhw ar gael, felly.		Ms Jardine: In terms of anecdotal evidence, we do hear now and again from people, and the unions also tell us the same thing. But we deliberately don’t go into these kinds of issues that we hear about. What we also have on the register is a record of teachers’ ability and the level of their ability in terms of being able to speak Welsh and their confidence to teach through the medium of Welsh too, because there is a difference there. Therefore, we know where the teachers who are content to teach through the medium of Welsh are. I could give you some examples of where the majority of those stand, too, in terms of where they are available.
[113] I don’t know if you’ve got anything else to add, Hayden?
[114] Mr Llewellyn: Yes, a couple of things. In terms of the survey that we undertook in May 2014 and linking the data back to the register, it did appear, and does appear, to be the fact that, if you’ve got certain skills such as you’re able to teach or speak Welsh or if you have an expertise in certain secondary shortage subjects, you are going to be in more demand as a supply teacher. That’s fact. That came very clearly out of the survey and the data that we hold. Angela is right: we do hear some anecdotes, but I think it might be right for the next survey of supply teachers. When we undertook the first one on behalf of Welsh Government, the intention was to repeat the survey in a couple of years’ time, but, following the scrutiny of the committee, and you may want to give a steer in terms of areas you want to investigate further, I think there are some of these issues that we can look into further I think in the next survey, because we are hearing them anecdotally, as you say.
[115] Bethan Jenkins: Ond, a oes yna ffordd fwy strategol o edrych ar hyn, er enghraifft, nid yn unig gyda’r iaith Gymraeg ond gyda’r adrannau rydych wedi sôn amdanynt, fel mathemateg a gwyddoniaeth, i helpu i hwyluso’r broses pan fo ysgolion yn edrych? Heblaw eu bod nhw’n adnabod athro, weithiau, yn ôl beth rydym yn ei glywed, mae’n anodd iddyn nhw wybod a oes yna athro Cymraeg ar gael. A ydy hynny’n dod yn ôl i’r strwythur cenedlaethol, er enghraifft, roeddech yn siarad amdano yn gynharach?		Bethan Jenkins: But is there a more strategic way to look at this, for example, not just in terms of the Welsh language but also the departments that you talked about, like mathematics and science, for us to be able to help to facilitate the process when schools are looking? Unless they know a teacher, from what we hear, it’s sometimes difficult for them to know whether there is a Welsh-speaking teacher available. Does this return to the national structure you talked of earlier?
[116] Ms Jardine: I think that’s perfectly doable. It’s something that you could put into the framework as well. If you decide to have a national framework, part of that could be using the data from our register to identify people as they are training, so that you know where they’re training. We can track people from where they train to where they end up teaching, as well. You could certainly locate where they’re going to be available and that could be tied in, depending on what the model of delivery is going to be. That information is there and we could certainly find out more about the number that’s needed as well and in terms of influencing initial teacher education courses as well, so that there is more of a match there. So, if there is a real need, a real and identified need that we can verify via our register—because, very often these anecdotes become reality without any strong basis. In our initial days as a general teaching council, we undertook a survey because it was perceived that there was a shortage of teachers in general. We did the survey and we found out, actually, that wasn’t the case in Wales. Very often we suffer from hearing what’s happening in England, and, by osmosis, therefore, it must apply in Wales. So, what we can do is provide absolute information about what the position is in Wales and what the picture is and that can be built in to any framework in the future to make sure that that linkage is fair.
[117] Mr Llewellyn: I think, as well, with some of the issues we’ve talked about today, the solutions we feel are all interrelated. Firstly, look at the reasons for absence. There are two things: it is unplanned absence such as sickness, and it is planned absence, CPD. In terms of the latter, strategies at school level and local level shouldn’t be too hard to put in place because you know the absence is coming and you can plan for it, whether you do it within your school, through cover, or you use, as we’ve suggested, a group of supply teachers to cover a number of schools—NQTs who are given a more substantive job. In terms of the sickness, that’s where some of those solutions, like a group of NQTs covering a number of schools, come in. Really, as Angela said, you’re looking for those people to have the right subject mix and the right bilingual skills or Welsh-language skills so that you’ve got the balance of people there. I really do think that some of those NQTs can be better utilised. They are crying out for more permanent jobs. I think there’s something there in terms of one of the solutions.
[118] Ms Jardine: I think if you couple that with finding out what’s causing the sickness and working to reduce that, then, for the system and for the children, it’s going to increase that continuity and reduce the difficulties of managing the absence that we have currently on a short-term basis.
[119] Ann Jones: Aled, you had a point and then—
10:30
[120] Aled Roberts: Rwyf jest eisiau deall yn union beth rydych wedi’i ddweud o ran yr arolwg yma. Mae’ch tystiolaeth chi’n dweud bod 25 y cant o’r athrawon cyflenwi yn athrawon cyfrwng Cymraeg, ond rydych chi wedi dweud eich bod chi’n mesur pa mor fedrus ydyn nhw yn eu Cymraeg a phethau. Felly, ai athrawon sy’n siarad Cymraeg ydy’r 25 y cant, ynteu athrawon sydd â phrofiad o ddysgu cyfrwng Cymraeg? Achos mae’r ddau beth yn hollol wahanol, wrth gwrs.		Aled Roberts: I just want to understand exactly what you said about this survey. Your evidence says that 25 per cent of the supply teachers are Welsh-medium teachers, but you say that you measured their ability in their Welsh language. So, is that 25 per cent of teachers who are able to speak Welsh or teachers who have experience of Welsh-medium teaching? Because the two things are entirely different, of course.
[121] Ms Jardine: In terms of the survey—
[122] Mr Llewellyn: Yes. Without the figures to hand—the figures are slightly different—what you do see is the percentage able to speak Welsh and teach through the medium of Welsh. For supply teachers, it’s slightly lower than the overall registered population. So, there are some challenges there, in terms of Welsh-medium, and, as I say, certainly for speaking and teaching Welsh, those supply teachers are well used, and the number of days that they do undertake, certainly from the survey, is higher than other supply teachers. So, when you get in to specifics—whether it’s subject, whether it’s language, whether it’s particular areas of the country—those challenges in supply, in terms of getting bums on seats and having well-trained people, they’re only going to increase. I think a really important point that Angela mentioned earlier is that our evidence shows that supply teachers are more predominant in primary, and that is mainly to do with the availability of jobs in primary.
[123] Ann Jones: Suzy.
[124] Suzy Davies: It occurs to me that one of the main reasons we might be hearing these anecdotes about teachers being unable to teach through the medium of Welsh, even though they’ve been booked to teach through the medium of Welsh, is that they’re self-identifying as being able to teach through the medium of Welsh. If that’s causing problems with quality in relation to the Welsh language, does self-identification of other skills start to create problems as well? Are you getting complaints from other skill sets, where teachers have said, ‘Yes, we can do this’ and, actually, when they turn up, they can’t?
[125] Mr Llewellyn: Not really. We’re not hearing too much; we do hear some points of that nature raised, but it’s anecdotal. As I say, I think it’s an area that could be further explored in survey round 2, really. As I say, we’d be keen for the committee to identify areas that you want to pick into in more detail, so that you’ve got the hard evidence rather than anecdotal. So, we hear them on occasions.
[126] Suzy Davies: I think how you phrase the questions is going to be particularly important.
[127] Mr Llewellyn: Very much.
[128] Suzy Davies: Okay, that’s all, thank you.
[129] Ms Jardine: We have evidence that, in a very small number of settings, you’ll have people other than qualified teachers employed: instructors, for example, and then, over a period of time, you might find that they become employed at a school. Where that happens, we refer them directly to the Welsh Government, and we report on those annually, in meetings, to the Minister as well. It’s a very, very small number, but, obviously, we want to maintain that quality by having qualified teachers in front of the classes wherever it’s possible, really.
[130] Bethan Jenkins: Just on that, because, obviously, when we talk to the teachers informally as well—and I’ve heard it elsewhere—we hear that they’re using higher learning teacher assistants as well to restructure a school in the event of a sickness. So, what evidence do you have that people are not resorting to supply teachers, and trying then to, sort of, have a hotchpotch of a situation, where they are actually putting a non-teacher in front of a class for too long a period, just so that they don’t have to get somebody external in that may cost more for the school?
[131] Ms Jardine: I think there is, again, anecdotal evidence of that, currently, and we’ve got odd examples where that’s caused some difficulties. But, I think, in the future, one of the great benefits of moving to the education workforce council, of course, is that we’re going to register that whole range of people, and we certainly know that support staff unions, for example, are very keen that people only undertake the work for which they are qualified. So, our register in the future will be able to identify the qualifications, the levels—
[132] Bethan Jenkins: Will the register actually identify what exactly they’re going to be doing on a daily basis, however?
[133] Mr Llewellyn: It won’t do, but, currently, the legal requirement is on a school to only employ a registered teacher undertaking certain duties. We do get reported to us, or we become aware of unqualified people undertaking the work of a teacher—small numbers, but it does happen. Sometimes, it’s when the individual is told by the head to register with us, and we say, ‘You can’t, because you’re not qualified’. In those instances, over the last couple of years, we’re now formally reporting them to Welsh Government officials and the Minister, because what we’re saying is, ‘Those schools that are in breach of Welsh Government regulations, we’ve become aware of it, so we feel duty bound to tell you’. So, those are the instances we’ve become aware of. Some of them are quite startling in terms of who is teaching the children. We’ve had reports of the school secretary, for example, and others are. It’s that creepage in the system, as you indicated there. Initially, the person’s covering a day. Before you know it, it’s a week; it’s two weeks; it’s three weeks; it’s a term. But we take all of those instances, whether it’s a day or a term, seriously, and we’re reporting those to Welsh Government officials and the Minister.
[134] Ann Jones: Okay. Thanks very much. We’re over time, but there you go. Can I thank you both very much for your evidence? We’ll send you a copy of the transcript to check for accuracy, so if you could just let us know, and then that will form part of our final report. So, thank you both very much for coming this morning.
[135] Ms Jardine: Thank you. Can I just offer if there’s anything at all that we can assist the committee with, in terms of data or further evidence, please contact Hayden at the office? [Laughter.]
[136] Ann Jones: Yes, we will do. Well done, Angela; that was an excellent example of how you move on. The committee will break for 10 minutes if that’s okay. Thanks very much, guys.
Gohiriwyd y cyfarfod rhwng 10:36 a 10:50. The meeting adjourned between 10:36 and 10:50.
Ymchwiliad i Waith Athrawon Cyflenwi—Sesiwn Dystiolaeth 8 Inquiry into Supply Teaching—Evidence Session 8
[137] Ann Jones: Right. Well, we’ll carry on with our evidence sessions. Our next session is from New Directions and Teaching Personnel. Can I ask you both to introduce yourselves, for the record, and then we will go into some questions if that’s okay?
[138] Mr Williams: My name’s Gary Williams. I’m director of business development for New Directions Education.
[139] Ann Jones: Okay, and—.
[140] Mr Lefley: Derek Lefley, business development manager for Teaching Personnel.
[141] Ann Jones: Okay, thanks very much and thank you both for your written evidence as well, which committee members have read. There’s a set of questions around the use of supply teachers, continuous professional development, performance management, local authority oversight, quality assurance and then Welsh medium and so on. So, those are the five basic areas. We’ve got roughly about an hour, so Members need to be aware of that as well. Aled, do you want to start?
[142] Aled Roberts: Rydw i am ofyn yn Gymraeg. Rydym ni eisiau deall yn union beth ydy’r rhaniad rhwng athrawon cyflenwi sy’n cael eu defnyddio ar gyfer absenoldeb oherwydd salwch ac absenoldeb o achos rhyw gynlluniau neu ddatblygiad proffesiynol. Rwy’n meddwl bod New Directions yn dweud bod yna raniad o tua 90 i 10 y cant o ran yr athrawon maen nhw’n eu cyflenwi. A ydy hynny’n adlewyrchiad teg ar draws y sector o ran yr asiantaethau? Achos, mae’r ffigurau yna braidd yn wahanol i’r ffigurau rŷm ni wedi’u derbyn oddi wrth y penaethiaid eu hunain a gan Gyngor y Gweithlu Addysg.		Aled Roberts: I’m going to ask my questions in Welsh. We want to understand precisely what the split is between supply teachers who are used for absences because of sickness and absences because of some plans or continuous professional development. I think that New Directions says that there’s a split of 90 per cent to 10 per cent in terms of the teachers that they supply. Is that a fair reflection across the sector in terms of the agencies? Because, those figures are quite different from the figures that we’ve received from headteachers themselves and from the Education Workforce Council.
[143] Mr Williams: The figures relate to all our supply, which includes a lot of long-terms positions as well, which are obviously planned long-term vacancies such as planning, preparation and assessment cover in primary, maternity and longer term sickness. If you go to more of our supply bases—our day-to-day cover—I would say it’s more like a 30:70 split on the actual amount of teacher days. As you know, New Directions has the national procurement service contract running at the moment for 17 local authorities, and we’ve just been awarded the 22 local authorities as agency provider. We give management information to each of the local authorities, and the 30:70 split on temporary supply is more of an accurate figure for that area, but on our total supply basis, it’s 90:10, because there are a lot of long-term positions booked through New Directions as well.
[144] Mr Lefley: I think the splitting out of those figures can be quite complex, actually. So, 75 per cent of our overall business is of a longer term nature, not necessarily covering sickness as such, because we work with schools in terms of offering candidates on a temporary to permanent basis, with a view to taking them on a contract full time, or on a temporary contract. So, from that point of view, it can be very varied. In terms of support staff, they’re often employed as a flexible workforce: say, if they’re assessing a child and they need additional support whilst the child is being assessed, and then they make a decision about whether the child is best placed in that school or best served going somewhere else, again, we offer staff on that basis. It’s quite difficult. In terms of the day-to-day element, at peak times, yes, 80 or 90 per cent of that will be for day-to-day sickness cover or absence cover in some capacity, but it does vary tremendously from school to school sometimes. There’s a lot of release time, non-contact time, CPD, sharing of best practice and going into other schools going on, whereby they will utilise staff to cover that sort of absence as well. The cycle of sickness peaks and troughs throughout the year, so, typically, February-March time is a peak, October-November time is a peak, and then other times of the year it will vary.
[145] Aled Roberts: O ran y galw ar eich gwasanaethau chi, faint o hynny sydd ar gyfer cyflenwi athrawon, neu faint ohono fo sydd ar gyfer, dyweded, cael staff ychwanegol un i un, neu staff addysg arbennig? Beth ydy’r rhaniad o ran y gwasanaethau yr ydych yn eu darparu?		Aled Roberts: In terms of the demand for your services, how much of that is for supplying teachers and how much of it is for supplying, say, additional staff for one-to-one sessions, or special educational needs staff? What’s the division there in terms of the services that you provide?
[146] Mr Williams: From New Directions and the all-Wales agreement, Welsh schools last year spent in the region of £16 million with New Directions. Just over 60 per cent of that spend was on front-line teaching and the rest was on classroom support, but we’re talking ancillary use as well.
[147] Mr Lefley: Our split is about 55 per cent support or intervention work and then 45 per cent for teachers in the traditional sense of supply teaching, as people understand it.
[148] Ann Jones: Okay. Thank you very much. Simon on continuous professional development and performance and then David.
[149] Simon Thomas: Both of you, I think, in your evidence make the point that, in essence, CPD is a voluntary thing—it’s something that teachers themselves should be delivering. But the evidence that we had, and also the informal evidence directly from supply teachers, underlines how difficult it is for them to access that when they’re in the school. For example, they can’t go on the school trip. So, that’s one element that they can’t take off, or they may not be there on the day that CPD is delivered, on the INSET day in the school. I know you both have elements of CPD, but is there something that you do as a kind of safety net for CPD for supply teachers and support staff as well?
[150] Mr Lefley: Increasingly so. As a company, we’ve just launched what we call, ‘the CPD academy’, which is bringing together elements that we’ve already done, but a recognition that teachers and support staff need additional skills in order to progress and develop in their own careers. So, some of that is, I guess, what you’d call a fairly standard affair from an agency in terms of introduction to different topics and things. So, for instance, we are accredited Team-Teach trainers now, so we provide Team-Teach training for all staff who need it or want it. We deliver Read Write Inc. because we recognise, particularly in Wales, that a lot of the schools are using Read Write Inc. as a tool for literacy improvement with children. We work with the National Autistic Society to provide training and support for autism awareness training. So, we’re developing a suite of genuine CPD that will be available to any staff who want it and that will help to develop them.
[151] Increasingly, we’re working—in England more so at the moment, but it’s something that we want to explore in Wales as well—with the teaching schools system in Wales. We’re approaching schools that deliver CPD along the lines of what makes an outstanding teacher and are working with them to offer that to our staff as well. But it still remains a voluntary thing—we can’t force people currently. We encourage strongly, but we can’t force people. Well, in some cases, we can: where they’re going into a school where Team-Teach is a requirement, in order to be able to work in that school, you will have to have the Team-Teach training.
[152] Mr Williams: New Directions places, every week in Wales, about 2,500 to 3,000 temps and, in a lot of the areas, particular types of training are mandatory. We have a level 1 safeguarding course that we provide online. We believe that that is the future and we deliver online training to all our candidates and that’s on a mandatory basis. For our teachers, we do classroom management courses—all in line with the National Procurement Service’s all-Wales agreement specification. We also have the Team-Teach accredited training and autism awareness, but we also train cover supervisors as well. That is another online course to help them to provide services to secondary schools. Then, regionally, certain local authorities will request of our support workers that they’re aware of areas such as manual handling training, Team-Teach, food safety awareness and all sorts of things like that. Wherever that is required, because of the specification of the all-Wales agreement, we will provide that training.
[153] Ann Jones: Bethan’s got a quick point on this.
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[154] Bethan Jenkins: I just wanted to ask, emanating from what you said with regard to ‘needs’ and ‘must’, you say you can’t force them obviously, but can you just say what incentives you give, then, to teachers who do carry forth the training? Of course, what we’re hearing is that they simply can’t find the time and if you ring them and say, ‘Can you go to school x?’ Well, obviously, they’ll go to school x as opposed to doing the training in hand. Can you also give us some clear figures as to who is doing what, when, and how many people are doing the training, because we’re not hearing the same story that you’re telling us—that people are accessing these training facilities?
[155] Mr Williams: Yes. The point Derek made, actually, is that it is on a voluntary basis from the teachers and the classroom assistants themselves. They don’t all attend our training courses and we can’t force them to. We try to make it as easy as possible. We will put our training courses on during the holiday periods, so it doesn’t impact on their earning ability. We do as much as we can, and, as I say, in certain areas, there are compulsory requirements. In certain authorities, they insist on Team-Teach manual handling. If a classroom assistant wants to work in those authorities, they have to undertake that training through New Directions. In those instances, we will get a very good uptake, and, in other areas, not as much. As I say, there are some very good classroom practitioners out there—very experienced classroom practitioners—but when we ask them if they’d like to attend a Team-Teach  course, they quite often say to us, ‘Would it stop me from working?’ And, usually, the fact is that they have a great relationship with their local school and the school says, ‘No, I don’t want either of them to have Team-Teach training’, and they won’t attend that course. So, in those instances, there’s not a lot we can do.
[156] Bethan Jenkins: What I’m trying to say is that it’s about building some sort of structure where that would be necessary for them to move forward with you, as an agency, so if they haven’t carried out a certain element of CPD, you say, ‘Well, actually, another person has done more than you, therefore, we won’t be using you on this occasion’.
[157] Mr Williams: As I just mentioned, a school will require that particular person. They might ask for Bethan Jenkins to go in and we say, ‘Well, look, Bethan hasn’t had Team-Teach training’, for instance, and they actually say, ‘Well, we know Bethan; she’s a good teacher and we don’t actually need her to have Team-Teach. Can we have her today?’ It might be in an area where Team-Teach is required, but a particular school might make the decision that that is not a requirement.
[158] So, it’s working with the schools to get that through, but certain candidates are of a quality and they know that. I was watching Hayden from the General Teaching Council giving evidence earlier, and he talked about the Welsh-medium sector. There is a shortage of Welsh-medium supply teachers out there and they are a little bit more reluctant to attend the training, because they feel they don’t need to. The simple fact is that we will offer training to everybody and as many temps as possible will attend. If there was some way to make everything a mandatory set or suite of courses for everyone to attend, that would be excellent. Under the national procurement service framework, there is that requirement in the specification for that. Imposing that is quite difficult.
[159] Ann Jones: Suzy has got one small point and then I’ll come back to you, Simon.
[160] Suzy Davies: It is very short. Are your courses free?
[161] Mr Williams: Yes.
[162] Mr Lefley: Some are, some aren’t. So, for some, we ask for a contribution from the teacher or teaching assistant. So, depending—
[163] Suzy Davies: Can you give us an idea of what it might cost—just a random one?
[164] Mr Lefley: Yes. So, for Team-Teach, we ask for a £20 contribution to the overall course, for instance, and partly we do it because it means they’re likely to turn up. Whereas, sometimes, when you put on a course for free, you get a lot of people pulling out the day before or on the day of, so, therefore, the numbers aren’t quite where you were. So, with an element of investment in it, then we find that people turn up.
[165] Suzy Davies: Okay, that’s lovely. That’s fine, thanks.
[166] Simon Thomas: Yes. I’m just looking at the same question as Bethan’s but from a different perspective, which is: what do you do to actually monitor the people you have on your books in terms of their CPD? You’re providing some CPD on occasion, but they may be getting it elsewhere, as well. Particularly, from the newly qualified teacher perspective, of course, they will be trying to get a path to qualified teacher, professional standards, through, perhaps, supply teaching, which is very difficult. So, do you monitor that actively, as—well, I’m not sure whether you are the employer; we’ll come to that another time? Do you monitor that actively and are you in a position to promote that in terms of the relationship you have with schools that might be using you?
[167] Mr Williams: New Directions, under, once again, the all-Wales agreement specification, employs over 60 per cent of our 3,000-temp database. We do monitor that. There is a performance management programme and there’s a quality control programme as well. All our training courses that we provide for our candidates and other courses they might have attended actually go onto their file—their electronic file. Obviously, then, when we put them forward for positions, whether they be short or long term, we share that information with the school because we feel it will benefit them in securing that position. Under the specification of the agreement, all that is recorded.
[168] Mr Lefley: Again, similarly, in terms of any CPD training and coaching that we provide, it’s certainly recorded and, in terms of things like Team-Teach, they get an official accreditation. In terms of what they are doing themselves as well, because we’re keeping in regular contact with them, yes, we update their career histories and skill sets because that in itself is a useful thing for the schools to know when they’re assessing candidates to have in their schools. So, as far as is humanly possible, yes, we keep that up to date.
[169] Simon Thomas: How will you, as agencies, interact with the new e-passport? The new deal for teachers has said that teachers will have this electronic record of their continuous professional development held by the Education Workforce Council. I know that you weren’t able to be here for that evidence, but you might have heard a little bit about that. Is there a way for you, as agencies, to interact with that?
[170] Mr Lefley: Yes, we’re exploring that already in terms of how we can link that record with the candidate’s record as well.
[171] Simon Thomas: Presumably, people are linked with more than one agency sometimes.
[172] Mr Lefley: Yes.
[173] Mr Williams: You get people registering with more than one agency. Once again, I refer back to the all-Wales agreement. Under the specification, that is something that we will look to work with. We do work with the Education Workforce Council already. It’s a simple situation. All that information we keep on our own passport service, which we send out to schools. So, when a candidate goes into a school for the first time, we send a passport out informing the school of everything that that teacher has done, either through New Directions training division or otherwise.
[174] Mr Lefley: Just to add to that, in terms of school-based CPD, if we’ve got candidates that are working on a regular basis or a long-term basis in a school, we try and encourage the school to include those candidates in their CPD, where it’s going to benefit the school, the children and the candidates themselves. Again, it’s not something that we can force the school to do, but many schools are alive to the usefulness of that and then will include those in such CPD. We’ve been talking to local authorities for quite a few years about having access to their ongoing CPD that’s available and allowing staff working through us to be able to access that as well. I think that that would be a potentially useful way forward as well, particularly in terms of the passport going forward.
[175] Simon Thomas: Clearly, there is CPD being done by schools. There is an element now in the consortia as well. There will be links through Schools Challenge Cymru, which will be developing. You provide some CPD as agencies, but many agencies don’t provide any CPD whatsoever. In a competitive field, because this is a market—some of us may not approve of that, but that’s a different matter; it is a market, so you’re competing with agencies that are not providing that. You’re providing something for nothing. Another agency won’t be doing that but relying on CPD provided elsewhere. If there were to be a mandatory link between registration and CPD for both teachers and support staff, wouldn’t that be effective in levelling the playing field so that at least all agencies were operating on the same basis?
[176] Mr Williams: Music to our ears. It’s a simple fact that, many years ago, there was a Welsh Government quality mark in place. I actually met with a Welsh Government official at the time to see whether it could be more robust to give us a level playing field. As a body, to refer to the all-Wales agreement again, there was a specification that we had to meet that brought in mandatory training, such as safeguarding, classroom management and so on. If the bar was raised, we would have to invest in that. It would be great if it was funded and we could have some support there, but all other agencies would have to raise the bar, but only if it was made compulsory for schools to use agencies that met these requirements.
[177] What you do have, I suppose, is cottage-type industry agencies, which go in and undercut our agreement rates. They’ll undercut large companies, because, obviously, we provide extra support to our candidates, and schools still use them. They’re not members of REC. I think Hayden gave you the figure earlier of around 40 in Wales—that’s the people who have registered an interest with the Education Workforce Council. It’s more like 50 plus, because we’ve got people from England now, operating out of England, trying to promote themselves in Wales. It’s not compulsory—they don’t have to register with the REC because schools can just go ahead and use them. So, if there was something set in place like that, I’m sure the bar would be raised in the quality of agency provision.
[178] Mr Lefley: I agree. I think, from my point of view, it would be good for schools, when they’re assessing buying services, to assess the full ramifications of who they’re using and why they’re using them. A quality element added to that, in terms of what sort of quality is being provided by that agency in terms of CPD and in terms of vetting and checking and ongoing assessment of individuals would be wonderful, as opposed to, in some cases, being the lowest common denominator and the cheapest agency wins. Usually, there’s some element along the line to the cost of quality somewhere.
[179] Simon Thomas: My final question, if I may, is a very short question, in a sense. From your perspective and experience, do supply teachers need specific skills to be a supply teacher, to deal with the nature of supply, rather than the skills that you would have as a general classroom teacher anyway? Is there a skill set that would be ideal for a supply teacher?
[180] Mr Williams: We provide classroom management because, you know, we all went to school and we all remember our supply teachers and there was an element of, ‘Look, we’ve got a supply in today, and that means no work.’ Quite simply, we provide classroom management and it’s based around the supply teacher. There’s increasing usage in secondary schools now of cover supervisors doing an online cover supervisor course as well, and that’s been accredited by the CPD. So, we do recognise they are unique positions within the school structure and we provide training to complement that.
[181] Mr Lefley: I’ve been working in education recruitment since 1996, so I’ve got quite a bit of experience in terms of the start of that industry to now. What we try and do is work with the schools that use us and what we find is that the ideal supply teacher in secondary is probably a PE teacher, in my mind, because their skill set—constant risk assessment, eyes in the back of the head—means that they make often successful daily cover teachers. But, actually, it’s the support that they get in the school—do they understand the discipline policy, do they know what the ethos of the school is, and do they know the reporting lines? Are they given that information by the school when they enter for the day, if it’s just for a day, or whether it’s for two weeks or a term? That’s what makes a successful day and that’s what helps the candidate go in and feel supported. If they don’t have that in place, it’s likely to not be a good day.
[182] So, it’s more to do with the level of interaction with the school that we have. So, part of my role is meeting with schools and meeting with senior leadership and understanding what happens in that school and, therefore, who is best placed in that school. It’s that kind of relationship that we try and develop with client schools, which makes a more successful combination, as opposed to, ‘They’re good.’ There are certainly people who are not suited for supply. It’s not that they’re a bad teacher or teaching assistant; they’re just not suitable for that kind of role. So, we will either not register them or, based on the feedback, give them advice as to where we think they should go instead.
[183] Ann Jones: Okay. I’ve got Aled and Suzy, and I know David’s still got some stuff on CPD.
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[184] Aled Roberts: Jest er mwyn inni fod yn glir o ran eich tystiolaeth chi, rwy’n derbyn bod yna achosion lle mae’r athro neu’r athrawes gyflenwi yn rhywun y mae’r ysgol yn ei adnabod, ond, yn yr achosion lle nad yw’r ysgol yn adnabod yr athro, rydych chi wedi dweud eich bod yn cynnig neu’n rhoi yr e-broffil, o ran athrawon newydd gymhwyso, ond pa wybodaeth rydych chi’n ei rhoi o ran datblygiad proffesiynol lle nad yw’r e-broffil ar gael, achos bod athro neu athrawes ar ddiwedd eu gyrfa, neu am eu bod nhw wedi bod yn y gyfundrefn am nifer o flynyddoedd? A ydych chi’n ei wneud o ym mhob achos, eich bod chi’n rhoi’r wybodaeth i’r ysgol, neu a ydych chi jest yn ei gynnig o am fod rhai ysgolion yn gofyn amdano a rhai ddim?		Aled Roberts: Just to be clear about your evidence, I accept there are cases where the supply teacher is someone known to the school, but, in those cases where the school doesn’t know the teacher in question, you’ve said that you offer or give the e-profile in terms of NQTs, but what information do you give in terms of CPD, where the e-profile isn’t available because a teacher is at the end of their career, or because they have been in the regime for a long time? Do you do it in every case, that you give that information to the school, or do you just offer it because some schools ask for it and some don’t?
[185] Mr Williams: On our e-passport, it includes everything from a DBS notification and all other areas, qualifications, and so on. It also includes any CPD that they’ve done with New Directions and any CPD that we feel is relevant to the position, and their position as a teacher. We do have retired teachers who work with us—even retired teachers with many years in schools have had continuous professional development. If there’s what we call ‘the relevant courses’, we put that on their passport as well, because we take that from their CV.
[186] Aled Roberts: Is that required by all schools, or is it just offered?
[187] Mr Williams: No, it’s actually part of our contract management specification of the all-Wales agreement. That’s what we’ve said we can provide each and every time a candidate goes in and completes a booking.
[188] Aled Roberts: It’s what you can provide, but is it taken up by all schools?
[189] Mr Williams: They receive the passport in an e-mail. Every time a candidate goes in for the first time, they will receive that passport. We have to assume that they read it, but, obviously, we don’t know that.
[190] Ann Jones: Suzy.
[191] Suzy Davies: Just going back to the point Mr Lefley made about working closely with schools in order to design your programmes, if you like, how practical is it for agencies to retain a bank of school policies, the relevant school policies? Because, obviously, you heard the complaint that teachers can turn up and there’s no welcome pack for them. Can you keep welcome packs?
[192] Mr Lefley: We do. What tends to happen is that most schools have them in a PDF format that we can retain. It’s then quite easy for us to attach that to each candidate, before they go into the booking.
[193] Suzy Davies: That’s the thing—first thing in the morning.
[194] Mr Lefley: So, it is possible, but it’s also the knowledge—. So, individual consultants within our organisation will work with a certain group of schools, as opposed to all schools. So, they also build up their own knowledge of the individual schools—they’ll be going into the school to meet, they’ll be doing things that we call ‘orientation days’, where they go in and volunteer for a morning or a day, perhaps as a classroom assistant or something, again, to get a better understanding of, typically, what happens in the class, the sort of children that the candidates have to deal with, so, therefore, again, when they’re recruiting staff for that school, they’ve got a better match, so that we get it right more often than not. So, it’s that whole process of the relationship with the school that is of key importance to us.
[195] Mr Williams: What New Directions do as well is we recruit a team of ex-headteachers from the primary, secondary, special needs and Welsh-medium sectors to go out and visit schools to fact-find information on the ethos of the schools, and we get that information as well, so, if it’s in PDF format, we’ll retain it, and sometimes it can be linked to the school website, et cetera. So, all the information we can give before a candidate goes into the booking is always given, as a matter of course.
[196] Ann Jones: David, we’ll come to you for the CPD performance management, and then will you do the quality assurance questions you’ve got as well, because I think they probably follow on?
[197] David Rees: Thank you, Chair. A couple of points before I go on to performance management. On the e-profile issues that you send to the schools, do the actual supply teachers see those?
[198] Mr Williams: Under the Data Protection Act 1998, yes, they can; they are fully aware of our processes, because it is in their terms and conditions.
[199] David Rees: I appreciate that they are fully aware; do they have a copy of them?
[200] Mr Williams: They can have access to them. It’s a profile that we send out.
[201] David Rees: That’s not the same answer. Do they have a copy of them? You say that they can have access, but are they given copies, yes or no?
[202] Mr Williams: No.
[203] Mr Lefley: No.
[204] David Rees: Okay, thanks for that. And on the online training that you talk about—online training is one aspect, but how do you monitor online training to make sure that, actually, someone is benefiting and learning from it?
[205] Mr Williams: The courses that we put online are actually accredited by the CPD, so, they’ve had full accreditation. Safeguarding, for instance, is level 1, and, as I said, has full accreditation from the CPD. It’s very easy because it’s online. We can monitor exactly where they are during the course. So, whether they’ve started it, where they are, and whether they’re 30 per cent of the way. There’s an examination at the end, and then they get issued with a certificate. It’s all online.
[206] David Rees: So, they are examined.
[207] Mr Williams: Yes.
[208] David Rees: Okay; I just wanted clarification on that. On the issue of performance management, clearly CPD is a very important issue and something that actually will develop from performance management. We have concerns raised with us by teachers that there has been no performance management, basically, either undertaken by the school or by the agencies. How do you ensure performance management?
[209] Mr Williams: Referring back to the contract, under the specification of the contract, we have a performance management process in place where every single booking, whether for an hour, half a day or a term, is evaluated by speaking to the school. Through that, then, we get feedback. There is basically a scoring process in place. If there are people who are struggling in their position, as I mentioned to you we do have a team of ex-headteachers who work for New Directions, and they also act as safeguarding officers; they look after safeguarding issues and also our performance management issues. We can’t evaluate and speak to everybody because, as I say, we’ve got a database of 3,000. I’d probably have to recruit over 100 people to do that on a regular basis. We actually focus, unfortunately, just on the ones who are underperforming to see if we can bring them, through the performance management basis, back into good performance again.
[210] David Rees: Before I come on to that, I’ll ask you the same question.
[211] Mr Lefley: Yes, we seek feedback for every candidate that goes into every school every day, but, on top of that, we then have ongoing feedback for candidates regularly going into a school. You can imagine that if you attempted to get feedback at 3 p.m.  or 3.30 p.m. on the day that they’ve gone in, quite often the feedback will be, ‘Haven’t heard anything’, when you’re dealing with cover managers or whoever it may be that’s in charge of actual cover. So, to get beyond that, then—. So, at secondary level, if we’ve had, say, an English teacher going in, we’ll be talking to the head of English about the ongoing assessment of that candidate. If it’s primary, it will be the year leader, the headteacher or whoever it may be to get some further detailed feedback, a) so that we can pass that on to the candidate because that’s good to know, and b) to update their CVs and career history, if necessary, and then to identify anyone that may be struggling in certain areas so that we can look at what we can do to help.
[212] David Rees: On that basis, you are obviously relying very heavily on the schools.
[213] Mr Lefley: Yes.
[214] Mr Williams:Yes.
[215] David Rees: What actions do you take if you hear nothing from the schools?
[216] Mr Lefley: Well, again, part of that process of regular meeting with the senior leadership team is to identify problems like that. So, for every school that makes use of us we can offer what we call a service review report, which is a graphical and information report on every candidate that’s gone into the school for whatever reason over any particular period of time. That includes all the feedback we’ve had from candidates, and particularly if there’s no feedback as well. We have a grading system, so, if there’s no specific feedback, that comes out as a zero. So, we can talk about why we’re not getting the feedback and who we can approach to get the feedback. Again, it’s an ongoing collaborative process in order to—. That’s very useful because, sometimes, you can get a scenario where a headteacher may be looking at a report and saying, ‘I don’t agree with that score. They’re not that, they’re this’, and then we can talk about that. So, as far as is humanly possible, but we are very reliant on the co-operation of the school as well. That’s where we try to encourage the schools by saying, ‘Look; yes, you may deal with some agencies that are just agencies, but we’re not interested in being just agencies. We’re interested in working with you in improving learning in your schools. So, work with us to make sure that we’re sending in the right candidates’.
[217] David Rees: Same question.
[218] Mr Williams: We gain our feedback. We meet on a quarterly basis currently with the 17 local education authorities that are part of the all-Wales framework to give back management information on the quality of performance, performance management issues, et cetera. So, all the feedback, which might be retrospective—you know, we might not get hold of that person on that day—and all information on booking evaluation is fed back through these quarterly review meetings. So, it’s extremely important that we gain that information and that our schools are fully aware of that. So, we’re working very co-operatively with all our schools.
[219] David Rees: As for quality assurance, clearly, this is part and parcel of the quality assurance process, isn’t it? You’ve already expressed your strong views that there should be a quality mark across the sector to ensure that everyone is of the same standard, and I totally agree with that concept. How do you, first of all, ensure that your quality assurance procedures are being delivered by your staff on the ground—your consultants, as you called them, but also, in a sense, how do you ensure that the quality assurance from—. You mentioned, I think, in your evidence, that staff come from other areas where they may be under consideration of bad practice somewhere and you’ve got no control over that. How do you ensure that type of event doesn’t happen, so your quality assurance procedures are effective to ensure the school gets somebody who’s not known to be a difficult person? That’s the crucial element for a school.
[220] Mr Lefley: I mean, there’s an area of particular concern that I have in terms of the sharing of information from local authorities and through agencies. So, for instance, you could have a scenario where a candidate is no longer being used by an agency because of some issue that’s taking place in a school, but there’s no real system in place that would stop them, necessarily, going to another agency, registering, trying to get work and continuing to get work. So, there’s no, sort of, overarching process of sharing information from local authority to local authority, even, let alone local authority to agency, in some cases, in order to help cut out a potential safeguarding issue. So, from our point of view, the vetting and checking procedure is the key thing there, making sure that we are gaining references from the most recent work and from key members. So, that helps us with that.
[221] If we have an issue with a candidate that requires either suspension or further investigation, then, obviously, we are working with the local authority in terms of that, and, in our head office, we have a safeguarding officer whose job it is to make final decisions about continuing to use somebody, or not. But, yes, there is a gap in communication between local authority, school and agency that is a potential concern, yes.
[222] Mr Williams: I suppose we’re quite fortunate; once again, referring to the agreement, we work with 17 local authorities. We have just been awarded the new all-Wales agreement, which encompasses all 22 local education authorities, but we currently work with the 17 authorities and work with their safeguarding officers, so we are in the fortunate position that information is shared with New Directions. It’s a straightforward process—the criteria that Derek just mentioned as well are the standard REC criteria, so any member of REC will carry out all those mandatory checks to make sure we are placing the right person into the school.
[223] David Rees: Can I check, because I’m not sure of this, but you are obviously a member of REC, how often they accredit you? Do they come back every year and check you?
[224] Mr Williams: Every year.
[225] Mr Lefley: Every year. Their audit process is very robust, so, you know, if it’s something that you were not aware of, then I’d invite you to have them come down. They are there—they pick random branches. In an organisation like ours, where we’ve got lots of branches, they will randomly pick a number of branches, turn up, look at the computer systems, look at all the vetting checks and look at the processes. So, it’s a very robust system.
[226] David Rees: But not all agencies are—
[227] Mr Lefley: But not all agencies are REC accredited.
[228] Mr Williams: Under the all-Wales agreement, as well, we are additionally vetted by the actual local authorities that we work with. We invite them to come in and actually carry out their own audit on our procedures as well, and we work very closely with local authorities to—. In some areas, geographically, there are separate procedures where different authorities do it on a, you know, slightly different basis—like, they renew their DBS maybe every two years, not every three—and we work with the authorities to impose those regulations for that particular authority as well.
[229] David Rees: One final question, then: performance management you’ve identified as an issue, and you’ve identified you can’t do it all, because of the sheer numbers. Two points: one, can you give us an idea, maybe in writing, as to the percentage of your staff who are registered with you who have received performance management since, say, January? Secondly, could you also tell us, perhaps, how you then link the performance management data information to CPD, because if you identify something that needs to be done, how do you ensure—because you just mentioned earlier that it’s all voluntary—that person actually does that CPD?
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[230] Mr Williams: Through our process, it’s quite simple. At the end of the day, we will meet with people and we will say, ‘Look, maybe a classroom management course will suffice, because—it’s quite simple—we’re going to find it difficult to place you going forward unless you have this’. When we identify issues in those areas, then we do normally have a 100 per cent take-up, but I can actually give you figures from January on how many people we’ve had to performance-manage. It is quite minimal, because it’s all fed back from the schools. It’s not—. I don’t think there’s an issue with it at all.
[231] David Rees: It would be nice to have the figures.
[232] Mr Williams: Yes, certainly; I can provide those.
[233] Mr Lefley: Similarly, if there is a scenario where we feel that somebody needs to undergo some training in order to help, then they won’t work until they do it, or they won’t work. It doesn’t become voluntary then; that’s a requirement in order for us to continue to work with them. So, that’s what would happen.
[234] David Rees: Would you offer those courses free, out of curiosity?
[235] Mr Lefley: Yes, probably in those cases; absolutely.
[236] Ann Jones: Okay. Shall we move to local authority oversight? Keith.
[237] Keith Davies: You have spoken already, I think, about the fact that you have regular discussions with the local authorities, but I think in your response, Derek, you say that education authorities and consortia should do far more to scrutinise the work of teachers.
[238] Mr Lefley: There could be an element of a need to sort of join up some elements. So, I remember, say last year, there was an incident regarding a candidate—well, there was no issue, but there was an allegation. It was unfounded in the end, but (a) it took eight weeks to complete and (b) at one point, there were two local authorities that needed to be involved, and that local authority had not spoken to that local authority to alert them that there was a problem. So, we had suspended the candidate as per our normal processes, and yet, that local authority wasn’t aware that there was an issue. So, in my experience, there is a sort of lack of communication from that point of view. And then, I’d kind of like to see an understanding from a local authority that, when it comes to a teacher on supply, it doesn’t matter whether they’re in through an agency, or being employed direct through some local authority list, a speedy resolution would be useful, because when they’re suspended they’re not working and when they’re not working they’re not being paid. I think there needs to be some sort of understanding that that is the case with such candidates.
[239] Keith Davies: So, you’ve got these agreements. Who scrutinises then?
[240] Mr Lefley: We—
[241] Keith Davies: No; who from the local authority scrutinises then?
[242] Mr Williams: Various people. Procurement officers are always there, heads of education, finance, and we also work very closely with the safeguarding departments as well. It’s a performance management; there are key performance indicators. As I say, in the old arrangement, which we held from 2012 to 2015, because we performed so well, that was renewed, and we’ve just been awarded the new agreement for all 22 authorities. So, we’ve met the key performance indicators, and they covered areas such as booking fill rates, CPD is there, our Welsh language policy was scrutinised, because we have Welsh-speaking consultants in all our four branches across Wales to deal with that sector as well. But in terms of the local authority, it’s all agreed—key performance indicators, with the national procurement service, and each individual authority. Some authorities ask for certain other things as well, and that’s all delivered under the contract, and if we don’t deliver, obviously then we have to turn things around from a performance viewpoint.
[243] Keith Davies: So what kind of percentage would you think that—. We’ve been told, in evidence, that in quite a large number of secondary schools, the schools have their own supply pool. So, what’s—
[244] Mr Williams: Obviously, I don’t have access to the school’s information, but I would—. New Directions, in our history—or sorry, during the duration of the first contract, over 1,300 schools in Wales used New Directions. That was quite an extensive spend. The areas that didn’t were the ones that weren’t signed up to the original framework. We’re talking about the far north-west authorities. But in certain areas, we actually help councils with their own individual provision, such as IOTAs and inclusion services as well. And we’ve even helped areas such as the music service and so forth, all within the realms of the contract and the specification and the contract management key performance indicators.
[245] Mr Lefley: It is quite typical for a school to have a pool of candidates that they use on a regular basis, whether they are retired from the school themselves or they are local teachers that they’ve come across, or things like that. So, that’s not untypical, particularly with secondary schools, and particularly in the more rural areas where sometimes there aren’t the same number of teachers or teaching assistants around. So, we just work with those. Sometimes they will call on them, sometimes they will call on us.
[246] Keith Davies: But, if they’re funded through the school, if they’re with the school pool, they’re actually funded through the LEA.
[247] Mr Lefley: Yes. So, they will be paid—
[248] Keith Davies: The normal rates, then.
[249] Mr Lefley:—paid to scale and with all full on-costs, yes.
[250] Keith Davies: Okay, that’s fine. Thank you.
[251] Ann Jones: Do you have a couple of quick questions, Bethan, on Welsh-medium?
[252] Bethan Jenkins: Rŷch chi wedi dweud yn eich ateb bod yna consultants Cymraeg gyda chi. Beth mae hynny’n ei olygu wedyn ar lawr gwlad? A ydych chi wedyn yn gallu gwybod yn iawn sut a lle mae angen i’r athrawon hynny fynd? Achos, beth rydym ni’n ei glywed yw bod yr asiant yn gofyn i rai athrawon—. Maen nhw’n talu mwy i’r person hynny os ydyn nhw’n fodlon mynd i rywle sydd efallai yn fwy anodd, yn ddaearyddol neu yn anodd o ran yr ysgol, oherwydd eu bod nhw’n siarad Cymraeg, er efallai nad ydyn nhw’n gymwys yn y sector hynny—er enghraifft, efallai eu bod nhw’n athrawon cynradd sy’n mynd i ysgol uwchradd. So, a oes gennych chi ryw fath o strategaeth o gwmpas hynny?		Bethan Jenkins: You have said in your answer that you have Welsh-speaking consultants, but what does that mean on the ground? Can you then know precisely how and where those teachers need to go? Because, what we hear is that some teachers are being requested by the agency—. They will pay them more if that person is willing to go somewhere that may be more difficult to reach, perhaps geographically or just difficult in terms of the school, simply because they speak Welsh, although they may not be qualified in that sector—for example, they may be primary school teachers who are asked to go to a secondary school. So, do you have some kind of strategy in that regard?
[253] Mr Williams: We don’t have a strategy; we have a compliant contract that we have to adhere to. We are under the specification of the all-Wales agreement; people have to be qualified teachers. We will not place primary teachers into secondary schools. I remember it did happen—. I opened up the first teaching agency in Wales way back in 1996, so you have to, I suppose, blame me for the agency market in Wales. I remember that, when you made Welsh-language provision compulsory up to the age of 16, there was a real shortage of teachers, and I remember then that Welsh-speaking primary teachers were going into comprehensive schools to teach second-language Welsh. It was purely because of the shortage. We even did a recruitment gimmick where I wrote to the Patagonian embassy to see if they had any spare Welsh teachers. So, we did that at that time. I believe that now has been addressed. The reason why we have Welsh-speakers at our branches is to provide a specific Welsh-language provision. Welsh-language schools, Welsh-medium schools, like to speak to us in Welsh—several of you have asked questions in the Welsh language today—so we feel we’re providing that. We add extra-value service to the schools and to the candidates as well. We’ve got good relationships with organisations such as CYDAG, and we work closely with the universities to recruit the Welsh-language teachers when they actually qualify from the universities, especially in areas such as Bangor and Aberystwyth.
[254] Welsh-language teachers are paid slightly more, I have to be honest, because there is a shortage of them, and we are actually even putting them on full-time contracts, so they’re actually employed by New Directions. In answer to your question about paying people a little bit extra to travel, it’s petrol money. So, we will pay them extra to get to positions if we need to fill the bookings and when we find that is a workable case. But, with regard to putting non-qualified teachers into specific positions, under the terms and conditions of the contract we can’t do that, because we wouldn’t meet our key performance indicators.
[255] Bethan Jenkins: When you pay them a bit more, is it ad hoc, or is that built into the structures of pay? Because, what we heard was they just randomly called them and said, ‘We’ll give you a bit extra if you go over here’ type of thing.
[256] Mr Williams: Under the agreement, our pay and charge rate, believe it or not, is chosen by the school. We have a rates matrix that starts off a particular pay rate, and our margin, as such, is fixed, so the pay rate and the charge rate move together. So, if a school wants to pay a bit extra, they can do so. So, it’s not random; it can actually be per booking, and there’s a structure to that. But, if we need to pay someone a bit of extra travel money, we will do that so we can fill that booking to meet our requirements of the contract. But, in that instance, no extra cost is given to the school; we absorb that.
[257] Bethan Jenkins: I suppose, if I can, it comes onto the issue with regard to pay generally, doesn’t it? Because, we have had some evidence with regard to the terms and conditions and the payments that you take as an agency. What are your views on that in terms of the cut that you take that the teachers then don’t get?
[258] Mr Williams: We charge a margin. I’d rather not say that we take a cut because, at the end of the day, there’s a service we provide. It’s quite simple: under the terms and conditions of the agreement, we won the National Procurement Service all-Wales agreement because we had the most competitive margin, so we make the least out of the booking under our competitive tender process. We put a matrix there, so the school can decide if they want to pay the temp. Our matrix runs from £80 to £150 a day, which is a newly qualified teacher rate up to about an N4. If they want to pay additional to that, a school can. Our margin, or our cut, remains the same. That remains the same. So, it’s all part of the agreement and we won that with a competitive tender process. Sometimes we do pay a bit extra, but it’s determined by the school. It’s not a long-term position. If they’re undertaking extra-curricular activities, they will get paid that bit extra and, obviously, the school is charged accordingly.
[259] Bethan Jenkins: Do you get instances where the school asks for a cover supervisor so that they can pay the supply teacher less because they’re obviously not being defined as a ‘teacher’ then?
[260] Mr Williams: We work very closely with our schools on that one and that’s a bit of a hot potato because—and I’ll put it nice and simply—we make slightly more of a margin from a teacher than we do from a cover supervisor. It’s only £1 a day, but it’s in our best interests for someone to go in as a teacher. There are examples where we’ve got teachers who work as cover supervisors, and they will go into a school, as a mathematics teacher for instance, and they’ll find out that, for a period or two periods of the day, they’re actually teaching maths. While they’re there, they will obviously teach that subject, but they are employed there as a cover supervisor. We work extremely closely with our schools to make sure that there is that differentiation in the positions. But, we know, sometimes, that schools will take advantage of the situation.
[261] Mr Lefley: I think you’re touching on areas, where, okay, teacher pay in Wales varies widely, depending on the agency, which then, in turn, is coloured by how much that agency is charging schools. That’s part of the problem that you’ve got at the moment—where you’ve got these agencies charging, I hear, £110 a day as a charge. Okay, so what are you paying your candidate? How can they be charging that low and paying somebody a half-decent salary or wage? So, that’s where the competitiveness in Wales is—that’s where we are. Therefore, what kind of quality is going on in terms of vetting and checking CPD quality control, if you’re charging that sort of rate per day? But, there’s no doubt that we can’t work with some schools because they won’t accept the charge that we want to offer them because it’s £10 or £20 dearer than that, or whatever it may be. So, that’s definitely an issue. Personally, I’d like to pay to scale, but we can’t because we also have to work within the margins that we have to make in order to sustain ourselves as a business and make a profit. I’m sorry about that, but we do. So, there’s that element to it as well.
[262] On Welsh-medium supply teachers, they will often be paid more because, in a commercial setting, they’re rarer. It’s the same as English and mathematics secondary school teachers across the country. Good ones know their worth and they will, therefore, expect to be paid more, and the charge will reflect accordingly.
[263] Ann Jones: A couple of brief questions, Suzy, because we’re running out of time.
[264] Suzy Davies: We’ve established that Welsh-medium teachers are rarer and that they’re paid more, so there’s obviously an incentive for candidates, coming to you, as agencies, to say that they’re capable of teaching through the medium of Welsh. We’ve already had other evidence that, sometimes, those teachers, when they’re in situ, don’t quite come up to the mark in terms of their ability to teach through the medium of Welsh. How many complaints do you get from Welsh-medium schools that the candidate you’ve sent them might have augmented or exaggerated their abilities, and what do you do subsequently in terms of performance management?
[265] Mr Lefley: Gary answered earlier to say—. Bethan, you were asking why bother with a Welsh-speaking consultant?
[266] Bethan Jenkins: I don’t think I said, ‘why bother’. [Laughter.]
11:45
[267] Mr Lefley: Okay, you were trying to understand. As part of that process, I could not determine how good a Welsh-medium teacher is because I don’t have a command of the language that would allow me to look at the nuances of that. So, part of the way we do it with schools as well—. I mean, different schools in Welsh-medium have different expectations, so, for one of the schools we work with, the candidate has to have been taught at primary, secondary, further education and higher education through the medium of Welsh. Those are the headteacher’s expectations, and no candidate that lacks that will even be looked at. So, it’s working again with the school to determine what they’re looking for, and then we offer trial days. So, we’ll pay the teacher, but we’ll send them into the school for free for a day so they can assess them, because that’s often the best way for a school to work out how good a candidate is and how well they sort of fit.
[268] Mr Williams: We once again are under the specification of the contract management provision. We work closely with the Welsh-medium schools. When we register the candidates, we would seek references—if they’re NQTs, especially from the universities—to see if the course they attended was delivered in Welsh. We’d also look at references, hopefully specifically from Welsh-medium schools, and we’ll make the choice. We have Welsh speakers in all our offices across Wales, so they can determine their Welsh-language skills as well. So, from the professional feedback that we receive, we will make that decision. Once again, we are under the contract management, and we do get issues. How many complaints? Very few, because the procedures we set in place to determine the skills in the Welsh language are quite robust.
[269] Suzy Davies: Yet we still get stories that non-Welsh speakers are going into Welsh-language schools.
[270] Mr Williams: We can’t do that under the specification of the agreement.
[271] Mr Lefley: That would only happen—from our point of view, it wouldn’t happen—but if there was that sort of scenario, there would be a conversation with the school to say, ‘This is what we have available today; is that of any use? Either “yes” or “no”’.
[272] Suzy Davies: Where I was coming from is that somebody might go and look great on paper, but when they turn up, they’re no good. When do you hear from the school that they don’t want to see that candidate again?
[273] Mr Lefley: We have ongoing conversations, so we wouldn’t ever send a candidate in for, say, a permanent role and just say, ‘Yeah, they’re fine’. We would talk to the school, interview, assessment, whatever it may be, so that the school themselves can say, ‘Yes, this is a good candidate, we’ll have them—thank you very much’. So, for day-to-day cover, again, with Welsh-medium, it’s about building up a pool of candidates for that school that they know, and they’ll ask for again and again.
[274] Suzy Davies: Or not. Okay. I think that sort of answers my question. I’m aware of time.
[275] Ann Jones: Even allowing for the delay, we’re just about at the end of the session, so can I thank you both very much for your evidence? I think there’s a note that we’re going to have, but the clerk will contact you for the additional information, if that’s okay. So, thank you both. We’ll send you a copy of the transcript to check for accuracy, and then that forms part of our deliberations and part of our report as well. Thanks both very much for your evidence today. Thank you.
11:48
Ymchwiliad i Waith Athrawon Cyflenwi—Sesiwn Dystiolaeth 9 Inquiry into Supply Teaching—Evidence Session 9
[276] Ann Jones: I’m going to move straight into the next session, because we are up against time. This next session is with ATL Cymru. If they’d like to join us at the table now. We’ll just do a quick number change and name change. There you go. It does help if you sit by your nameplate, because I have awful problems. Can I say thanks very much to you? I’m sorry we’re running late, but there’s been all sorts of chaos on the roads, which has delayed us all, I think. Could I ask you to introduce yourselves for the record? Then we are going to go into questions. We’ve got four areas of questions, so we’re going to have to have shorter questions and shorter answers as well. Philip, shall we start with you?
[277] Dr Dixon: I’m Philip Dixon, and I’m the director of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers.
[278] Mr Lewis: My name’s Gareth Lewis. I was an assistant headteacher in a secondary school until I took retirement last summer. Now I’m an employee of the New Directions agency, and I was very interested in some of the comments I just heard.
[279] Mr Healey: I’m David Healey. I’m deputy head in Ysgol Friars in Bangor. My areas of responsibility are with the timetable and curriculum, so I’m not directly responsible for appointing supply teachers, but obviously there’s a very close link between the work that I do and my colleague who does the day-to-day selecting of teachers, classroom colleagues and so on.
[280] Ann Jones: Okay, thanks very much for that. We’ve got four areas: the use of supply teachers and pupil outcomes, CPD and performance management, the role of local authorities and regional consortia, and then supply agencies. So, we’re going to try and get through those in some record time, I think. So, Aled and Suzy, you’ve got the first. Aled first and then Suzy.
[281] Aled Roberts: Diolch. Rwyf jest eisiau gofyn cwestiwn. Diolch am ganlyniadau’r arolwg. Rwyf jest eisiau gofyn i chi wneud sylw. Mae’r rhan fwyaf o’ch aelodau chi, ryw dwy ran o dair, yn dweud nad oes cynnydd wedi bod yn y defnydd o athrawon cyflenwi. Eto, mae’r dystiolaeth yn dweud i’r gwrthwyneb, i ryw raddau, a bod yna gynnydd wedi bod a bod dros 10 y cant o’r gwersi erbyn hyn yn cael eu cyflwyno gan athrawon cyflenwi. Felly, os ydych chi’n derbyn bod yna gynnydd o ran yr ystadegau swyddogol, beth ydych chi’n meddwl ydy’r prif resymau dros y cynnydd yna?		Aled Roberts: Thank you. I just want to ask a question. Thank you for the results of your survey. I just want to ask you to make a comment. Most of your members, around two thirds of your members, have said that there has been no increase in the use of supply teachers. Yet, the evidence contradicts that, to some extent, and that there has been an increase and that over 10 per cent of lessons by now are being offered by supply teachers. So, if you accept that there has been an increase in terms of the official statistics, what do you think are the main reasons for that increase?
[282] Dr Dixon: I think what we’re doing is surveying our members, so they are saying what they’re finding on the ground. I think that some of the main drivers for that increase would be greater sickness absence, and I think that’s driven by a greater general stress level within schools. I also think that, probably, the increased demand about better quality CPD is driving that as well. So, there’s sort of something plus and negative in the answer we would want to give. But, I think, certainly, we’re seeing sickness absence rising, and that’s the main driver.
[283] Mr Healy: I think I’d add to that as well that the financial situation that we’re in is somewhat uncertain. Certainly, up in our neck of the woods, there are serious cuts on the horizon that are already having an impact. I think that probably makes some headmasters reluctant to commit to a contract where a supply teacher is probably easier to bring in and then lose again, as well.
[284] Aled Roberts: O ran eich aelodau chi, os ydym ni’n troi at absenoldeb oherwydd salwch, rwy’n meddwl bod nifer ohonom ni wedi synnu, i ryw raddau, i glywed undebau eraill yn dweud bod yna ddiffyg cyfweliadau ar ôl i athrawon ddychwelyd oherwydd salwch ac nad yw hynny’n cymryd lle yn rheolaidd, er mwyn i ni ddeall beth yn union sy’n achosi’r absenoldeb yma drwy salwch. A ydy hynny’n adlewyrchiad teg o’r sefyllfa ar lawr gwlad?		Aled Roberts: In terms of your members, if we turn to sickness absence, I think that many of us have been surprised, to some extent, to hear other unions saying that there is a lack of return-to-work interviews following sickness absence and that they don’t happen regularly, just to understand what causes those absences through sickness. Is that a fair reflection of the situation at the grass-roots level?
[285] Mr Healy: My direct experience in Gwynedd is that we have a very robust absence management policy that is followed and adhered to certainly very closely in my own school but also across the county. In meetings with other headteachers and so on, they seem to report the same sorts of things. When it comes to the causes of the stress, I think there’s been a couple of changes recently in the way things are done in schools that have led to increased stress. One of them is a very much more data-driven culture where the performance of schools, teachers and departments is very closely tied to the data and even judgments by Estyn and others, and consortia and so on, on the quality of management in schools is linked very directly to the data. You can’t have a management decision judgment that exceeds that of the quality of the data. The adherence to quartiles and so on, where 50 per cent of schools are obviously going to be below the median, predetermines that 50 per cent of schools are going to be in a difficulty with their data before you start. That situation is being addressed with the categorisation model, but, of course, not this year; that will happen next year, because this year the quartiles are the starting point, aren’t they?
[286] Mr Lewis: I think one thing I would like to say is that absence management policies are great if they’re working properly, and enable you as a senior manager to actually spot the hidden stresses, if you like. If a member of staff comes back into school with a leg in plaster, it’s obvious what’s wrong with them—they’ve got a broken leg—and you have that quick management return-to-work meeting and it’s sorted. But, it does enable you to actually spot the person who is having the regular days off. Are they swinging the lead? Are there underlying causes, usually related to mental health issues, which are much more difficult to spot? I think that’s one of the things that absent management policies can really help to address. The problem that we’ve come across in some authorities, though, is the way that the policy is written. It’s almost like it’s operating a three-strike policy, that if you’re off three times, you’re into a capability scenario. Well, that’s not what it should be about. It should be about a healthy workforce being better for your school. So, yes, there’s no problem with having a policy, it’s just how they actually operate in some schools.
[287] Dr Dixon: I just want to say very quickly that part of my role is to supervise our casework provision. So, what I get fed back to me is that it varies greatly from authority to authority. Some are very good, insisting on following the policy correctly, making sure that there are back-to-work interviews and things like that; others are much, much more laissez-faire about that and, sometimes, the support isn’t there for schools, especially from HR.
[288] Aled Roberts: Picking up on that issue of inconsistency, has there been a split between LEAs and consortia, because we’ve heard evidence as well that HR policies, in some instances, have been determined at the consortia level, but in other instances, they’ve remained at local authority level? There’s clearly an issue regarding HR capacity within certain authorities; is that adding to the complex picture with regard to managing absence, as you stated, and understanding absence, which then feeds into the need for supply?
[289] Mr Lewis: I think one of the problems you’ve got is lots of our local authority HR departments aren’t actually HR trained. There is that incapacity to understand what they’re doing. They may be brought up in a corporate situation and deal with things centrally very well, but they don’t understand the nuances of the school situation and what’s actually happening in classrooms. So, I think there are some issues there.
[290] Aled Roberts: We heard evidence from headteachers in Denbighshire, where the HR function within the authority has been totally decentralised to the extent that groups of schools now are responsible for the HR function. How common is that across Wales, because we’re looking at, perhaps, the HR capacity being diluted to an even greater extent?
[291] Mr Lewis: One of the areas where there was a problem with the policy was actually Denbighshire. Some of our local members were complaining that it’s become almost part of a disciplinary process and a competency process, rather than absence management. So, yes, I agree that further dilution probably wouldn’t actually help.
[292] Aled Roberts: Okay. I just have one final question: what’s your view on the impact that the extension of the use of supply teachers and the ability of schools to match needs to the offer is having on the whole attainment picture throughout Wales? Do you feel that it’s a feature, or do you feel that’s been overstated?
[293] Mr Healey: Any lack of continuity is going to upset the children—any change of teacher, for whatever reason—and supply teaching is no exception. That teacher has to build up a rapport with the children again and earn their trust before they can start moving them on in their learning. So, it’s bound to have an impact, simply for that reason, whatever the quality of the teacher, but I think also there are some questions—and I think Gareth will probably come in on this—about the way supply teaching is delivered in certain areas and where teachers are being paid not as teachers but as cover supervisors, and so on, which is also going to have an impact on standards. I don’t know if you want to add to that, Gareth.
[294] Mr Lewis: Yes, I think, under the workforce agreement of 2003, we saw the advent of the notion of a cover supervisor. Now, I can see, as somebody who worked in a school, that having people on the payroll who actually knew the children and knew the school, but weren’t qualified teachers, was actually, perhaps, a better solution than bringing somebody in who didn’t know the children and didn’t know the school, but had qualified teacher status. What we have now is the agencies employing qualified teachers as cover supervisors, paying them about 50 per cent of the going rate. The school is paying for a cover supervisor, the person in the office who has got the cover supervisor in thinks, ‘Well, I’ve just saved all this money’, and this poor person is then in front of the class on a wet Friday afternoon, teaching a subject—sorry, they’re not teaching, they’re cover supervising. The work that I was given as a cover supervisor last Friday was ‘complete project’—two words—and it was for me to try to teach Welsh second language, which is not very popular in an English-medium school with year 9s on a Friday afternoon. They’ve chosen their options, they’re doing it because they have to do it, and it took all my many years’ experience of the classroom to actually get through that afternoon alive and for them to be learning.
12:00
[295] The teacher who was absent thought that there was a supply teacher coming in. They thought it might have been somebody who spoke Welsh coming in as a supply teacher and left work that might have been suitable for that—not for me on that afternoon. I’ve been into schools as a cover supervisor—local schools where I know the staff, and they look at me and say, ‘Oh great, it’s you. That saves me setting work.’ And I’m thinking, ‘Well, I know the budgetary situation you’re under and I will pick up the pieces and I will teach a lesson’—and I will teach the lesson even though I’m being paid less than I would get for stacking shelves in Asda.
[296] Aled Roberts: I’m glad to see you’re still here. [Laughter.] How does that happen with the national framework agreement? We were told by the previous witness that that is not possible.
[297] Mr Lewis: I have to be very careful, because I’m under contract to them—
[298] Aled Roberts: Right.
[299] Ann Jones: This is all being recorded. [Laughter.]
[300] Mr Lewis: —about what I actually say. In a way, I’m working for fun. I actually enjoy working with young people in the classroom, and senior management is not about that. It is, as David alluded to earlier, about the targets and whatever. I think that, when we’ve got to the stage, as I believe now, where we’re actually not doing the best for the children, that was the time to call it a day.
[301] I was in a meeting in Wrexham council where I was shown the figures—the matrix, as they call it—and I get paid less as my daily rate than a newly qualified teacher would get when I’m working as a teacher. Out of that, when they talk about expenses—it’s called the salary sacrifice scheme. For example, last week, I worked for three days, for which the school I was in was charged £570. Out of that £570, my notional salary was £360. But, because I sacrifice £80 of my salary for the week, I actually received £74 in expenses. But because I don’t pay tax or national insurance on expenses, I get a better take-home pay, but in that way the agency increases its margin because it’s not paying national insurance on that either. The other thing is that, on the matrix, it says what my daily rate is, then my work time agreement funding. That actually comes out of my money, not out of their bit. It comes out of my bit. Okay, I’ll get it back when I put in for a day’s holiday, but it comes out of my £120. National insurance is only paid on the first £153 of your earnings in a week, but they don’t pay that back to the school. They charge for the full national insurance in their matrix for the week. So, last week, I paid £17 national insurance because it was only on £286 minus £153, but then so did they. I worked it out that, last week, I took home £199. What happened to the rest? Well, about £110 went on national insurance and tax payments from both sides. I reckon they cleared over £260. Now, what do they do for that? In fact, the work was me ringing up the school where I do regular work and saying, ‘You want me three days? Okay, I’m available three days’. And I then tell the agency when I’m working. So, that’s why I have some difficulties with some of the comments I heard in here about the margin.
[302] Aled Roberts: Thanks for speaking off the record. [Laughter.]
[303] Mr Lewis: You’re welcome. [Laughter.] I’ll probably get no more work.
[304] Ann Jones: That might very much feature as a good quote within the report. Suzy, we need to make some progress.
[305] Suzy Davies: Just to go back to the impact on children’s outcomes, we’ve taken some evidence in the past that a school leader will choose to use supply teachers for years 7 to 9 in order to free up qualified teachers from within the school to teach the GCSE years. Is that something you recognise?
[306] Mr Healey: Yes, in certain circumstances.
[307] Mr Lewis: Yes, that’s why I was teaching Welsh all day last Friday, badly—because the regular teacher was actually doing catch-up classes with the year 11s for their oral exams this week. So, that’s why I was there.
[308] Suzy Davies: So, if 10 per cent of teaching spaces are occupied by supply teachers, as Aled said earlier, are years 7 to 9 getting a disproportionate number of supply teachers? Does that affect the continuity requirement that you were talking about earlier, Mr Healey?
[309] Mr Healey: I would imagine so. What the school is doing is looking at what they need to cover. Let’s say you’ve got a physics teacher absent and the supply agency can only provide a Welsh teacher, an English teacher or whatever, you’re going to shuffle your staff around to make sure that the specialism can be delivered if you can. You would tend not to do that just for a short-term absence—
[310] Suzy Davies: Not for one day.
[311] Mr Healey: But certainly over a longer period you would do it. I’ve even changed the timetable to make sure I can still cover A-level with my A-level experienced staff because the supply teacher that we can get doesn’t have the expertise to teach up to that level. So, it’s a case of trying to make sure that you’ve got staff that can deliver to all the children in the school.
[312] Suzy Davies: I would understand the pressure from your perspective, but from the children’s perspective—from the pupils’ perspective—are they living on supply teachers for three years, or is that overstating the case?
[313] Mr Lewis: That’s overstating the case.
[314] Dr Dixon: That’s overstating the case.
[315] Mr Healey: That’s overstating it.
[316] Suzy Davies: That’s good. What have your governors got to say about that, as well? You represent headteachers; what do the school governors have to say to headteachers about how supply teaching is used? Is it something that—
[317] Mr Lewis: A lot of it will depend on the budgetary situation, won’t it? If you’ve got a big deficit, one way in which you can recoup some of that is by not paying full salaries.
[318] Suzy Davies: Are governors content with that? I appreciate that you can only give me your own personal opinions on this, but I am curious.
[319] Mr Lewis: Some are, some aren’t.
[320] Suzy Davies: Okay.
[321] Mr Healey: The governors want the best quality education for children; many of them are parents themselves. I’ve never heard any comment on us shuffling staff in the way that we’ve just described to make sure that we can cover the needs of all the children. I would expect them to be supportive of that because, otherwise, there’s a group of children somewhere that we can’t properly provide for. But on the financial side, they also have a responsibility for the budget, don’t they? So, they’ve got a responsibility there to try to make sure the budget balances in very trying times.
[322] Suzy Davies: Thank you.
[323] Ann Jones: Right, we’re going to continue with professional development and performance management. I’m going to go to David first, and then I’ll come to Simon afterwards—but be conscious of time, guys.
[324] David Rees: Okay. I’ll be quick then. CPD is an issue. I think I’ve seen in your evidence that there’s a very deep concern among your members about access to CPD. What is the situation regarding CPD? We’ve just heard from these agencies—again, you probably heard that bit—that they do offer these courses, but do they actually encourage people to do CPD? How can schools also encourage people to do CPD when they’re supply, because of the loss of income, which is one aspect, but also the time that they would have to make sure that was available for a supply teacher?
[325] Dr Dixon: I think it depends on the sort of CPD—and some of it can be done online—that’s offered there, but I think some of the more substantive CPD, especially the stuff connected with pedagogy, is much more hit and miss. I think what we want to say—and you’d expect us to say this—is we don’t think that members should be at detriment. They shouldn’t be paying for their own CPD, no more than are those on full-time contracts doing that. So, we’d want to see, I suppose, a situation arising in which CPD is something that is equitable and offered to the whole of the workforce, whether they are on permanent contracts or whether they are in supply. That’s certainly not happening now, from our experience and from the overwhelming feedback we were getting from our members about that.
[326] Mr Healey: I think I probably work—from what the previous team was saying—in a fairly unique area in the north-west in that—. I think we need to make a distinction, first of all, between short-term emergency cover and longer term, more planned, like maternity cover or something like that. In the case of the long-term cover, our practice is to appoint a member of staff. We might go through an appointments process to do that and make sure that that member of staff then has the qualifications necessary to cover the subject that needs covering. They’ll be on a contract. If it’s maternity cover, it will be an open-ended contract that comes to an end when the mother returns to work. For the period of that contract they would be taking advantage of all the school’s CPD arrangements as normal.
[327] The other side then is the short term—you know, the odd lesson here and odd lesson there, a day here and day there type of cover teacher—in which case we wouldn’t be buying them in for our training courses if we didn’t need them to be covering, sitting in front of classes of children. I think, particularly if they’re agency-employed, there’s a duty on the employer to make sure that those staff have the same training opportunities and achieve the same standards of pedagogical knowledge and so on that permanently employed staff would.
[328] David Rees: You’ve identified the pedagogical issue, and I agree with that, because we’re also seeing that a large proportion of supply teachers are NQTs who have their future career ahead of them and who need to develop that pedagogy, in one sense. Is it your experience, then, that those types of people, who are on short term, not on the longer term, are losing out as a consequence of being on supply, because they’re not getting that development to actually take them forward in their careers?
[329] Mr Lewis: I’ve got a particular issue with the way NQTs have been treated by agencies. We’ve got an oversupply of teachers in Wales and it’s hard, particularly in the primary sector, for young people to get that first job. So, very often, they’re taken on by an agency with a guaranteed three or four days a week, being paid about £90 a day—the going rate for an NQT through an agency. But, then, they find that the 10 per cent planning, preparation and assessment time that all teachers are entitled to is on their day off. It’s one of the one or two days they’re not being paid for. Their extra 10 per cent is most definitely on the day that they’re not paid to work, and their meetings with their mentors are not on the days that they’re being paid to work. So, the school has this teacher as an NQT for four days a week, which is what they’d get if they were employing them on a contract, at a reduced rate. But, the young person is expected to work full-time, plus the extra time, effectively, for about half the salary, over the course of 12 months, that they would receive if they were directly employed by the school.
[330] If you get a new teacher who’s good and you want to bring them on board and offer them a contract, well that’s a different matter because there is a finder’s fee to pay, because they come through an agency. Now, there’s a minimum period that you’ve got to have them on. So, it’s no wonder that newly qualified teachers are trying it, sinking under the workload of expectation, and walking away, because, as I said earlier, if you want a guaranteed fixed income for over a year, you would be better off stacking shelves in any of the supermarket chains. So, why would you put yourself through uncertainty?
[331] David Rees: Do we have figures as to the number of people who are walking away?
[332] Mr Lewis: They are available nationally.
[333] Dr Dixon: I think the EWC is keeping track of that, and I think there are national figures as well. I think our own estimation is probably way over 20 per cent. I think the other issue there, which Gareth is touching on, is the way in which—. Is it a good offer to attract the best? We want to attract the best graduates into teaching, and once the word goes around this is what happens—. I was talking to a young man the other day who was saying that he’d left for various reasons—the teaching profession not being attractive enough. We’re losing those people; you know, they’re not entering at the start and then we’re not retaining them, so I think it is an issue—a serious one.
[334] David Rees: Obviously, linked to this is the performance management aspect. Again, your evidence indicates that there’s a large problem there because schools are struggling to actually undertake performance management, and, yet, previous witnesses indicated to us that they expect the schools to provide them with the information on performance management.
[335] Mr Lewis: Well, they do. Every time I go to a new place, there’s a phone call made. It’s quite ironic because, in the local New Directions office, I taught two out of the three members of staff who I deal with, and it’s quite difficult for them to discuss my performance. But, that is a regular thing. Somebody who was in a school previously would be on the other end of the phone and would say, ‘They were great’ or ‘Don’t send them again’. You know, those are the conversations that happen daily.
[336] David Rees: That’s the type of conversation you’re having. You’re not having anything formal or—
[337] Mr Lewis: No.
[338] Mr Healey: Sorry, could I just add one more thing?
[339] Ann Jones: Yes.
[340] Mr Healey: There is another potential issue for NQTs, in that to go through their NQT year and meet the requirements, each of the teaching sessions they do has to be a minimum half-day session. So, if they end up doing ad hoc lessons here and there, they’re not going to be racking up time towards their NQT year either.
[341] Ann Jones: Simon.
[342] Simon Thomas: Diolch. Un o’r ffyrdd i ddod dros rai o’r problemau hyn, efallai, fyddai gwneud hyfforddiant datblygu proffesiynol yn orfodol ar y proffesiwn, lle bynnag rydych chi’n dysgu. Os ydych yn athro wedi’ch cyflogi yn llawn amser, neu’n athro cyflenwi, bydd hyfforddiant datblygiad proffesiynol yn orfodol, ac, yn sgil hynny, wrth gwrs, wrth weithio mas sut mae darparu hynny, naill ai drwy asiantaethau, awdurdodau lleol neu gonsortia, y drafferth yw bod cymaint yn newid yn y gwasanaethau cefnogi hyn ar hyn o bryd ac mae pwy sy’n gyfrifol am beth yn gwestiwn o hyd. Ond, jest ar yr egwyddor o CPD gorfodol, beth yw barn yr undeb ar hynny?		Simon Thomas: Thank you. One of the ways of overcoming these problems, potentially, would be to make CPD mandatory on the profession, wherever you may teach. If you’re a teacher who is employed full time, or a supply teacher, professional development training will be mandatory, and, as a result, in working out how to provide that, whether it is via the agencies, the LEAs or the consortia, the problem is that there is so much churn in these support services currently and who is responsible for what remains unknown. But, just in terms of the principle of mandatory CPD, what is the union’s view on that?
12:15
[343] Dr Dixon: We’d be in favour of that, so that—
[344] Mr Healey: As an entitlement.
[345] Dr Dixon: Yes, as an entitlement. I think the Minister used the words ‘a challenge’ and ‘an entitlement’. We were obviously very happy about the word, ‘entitlement’ and we want to see that reiterated. If it was mandatory, it would mean that, I think, you would start to see the development of that very highly skilled workforce that we all want.
[346] What we’re equally clear about, though—and you’d expect us to say this—is that the cost of that can’t fall then to individuals who find themselves, you know, as supply teachers. We’d want that to be built into the system itself so that, wherever you were, that mandatory entitlement and challenge would be something that you would access and it wouldn’t be costing you because you had opted that you wanted to do supply teaching at that stage.
[347] Simon Thomas: Mae yna gwestiwn, rwy’n meddwl, ynglŷn ag unrhyw broffesiwn o ran lle mae’r gost yn syrthio. Hyd y gwn i am unrhyw broffesiwn, mae’r bobl sydd yn y proffesiwn yn talu rhywfaint tuag at y CPD; nid y cyfan, o bell ffordd, ond mae yna gyfraniad ganddynt. Ond, rwy’n credu taw’r pwynt rŷch chi’n ei wneud yw na ddylai fod yna gamwahaniaethu rhwng athrawon cyflenwi ac athrawon mewn swydd o ran yr hawl i CPD. Felly, rwy’n derbyn y pwynt yna.		Simon Thomas: There is a question, I think, in terms of any profession as to where the cost will fall. As far as I know about any profession, people within that profession will pay some of the cost towards their CPD; not all of it, but just some contribution. But I think what you’re saying is that there shouldn’t be any discrimination between supply teachers and teachers in post in terms of that right to CPD. So, I accept that point.
[348] Yn y trafodaethau rydych chi wedi eu cael hyd yma gyda’r Llywodraeth—achos mae’r Llywodraeth yn trafod gyda chi y fargen newydd, y cytundeb newydd yma a’r hawliau newydd yma—a ydy hwn wedi dechrau cael ei drafod o gwbl, ynglŷn â sut mae troi’r hawl yma’n rhywbeth a fydd yn newid y proffesiwn go iawn?		In the discussions that you’ve had thus far with the Government—because the Government is talking with you about the new deal, this new agreement and these new rights—have discussions on this started at all, in terms of how you turn this entitlement into something that will truly change the profession?
[349] Dr Dixon: I would choose my words carefully, now. We’re ongoing—
[350] Simon Thomas: Gareth Lewis can answer this one. [Laughter.]
[351] Dr Dixon: We’re in ongoing discussion with the Government. I would say that, at the moment, personally, I haven’t got sufficient view of the shape of the new deal, et cetera, to make much more comment on that. It does strike me almost as if we’re sort of building the plane as we’re taxiing down the runway. So, I think there are certain principles that we’ve agreed on, which are good, such as entitlement and all the things like that, while the detail of it—I think we’ve got a meeting in a fortnight’s time—is still being worked out and we’d like to see more on that, because I think the problem is moving from high-level principle and strategy and wish list, et cetera, into the detail on the ground.
[352] Simon Thomas: And particularly the detail for supply, and for newly qualified teachers, I would imagine.
[353] Dr Dixon: Well, I don’t think we’ve got much of the detail at all at the moment, for anything.
[354] Mr Healey: The key is that we want the teachers who stand in front of our children to have the highest possible professional standards and qualifications, and, where possible, experience as well. That’s no different whether they’re supply or permanently employed. So, I think, whatever we come up with as the future of training and development of permanently employed staff, the supply staff should have an equivalent entitlement.
[355] Simon Thomas: Just on the actual nature of CPD, you have touched on it in response to David Rees, but, just to go a little further than that, what’s become clear from the evidence we’ve received is that very few agencies actually supply any CPD anyway. We did have earlier evidence from two agencies that do a kind of CPD, and I acknowledge that, particularly when they give it as an entitlement, almost, to the people they have on their books, which is to be welcomed. Just to pursue that question of pedagogy—you know, ‘addysgu’—that is not the CPD that gives you the skills to command a classroom, is it? It’s CPD that keeps you safe.
[356] Dr Dixon: Yes, and one of the things we’ve found is that agencies that do supply it, sometimes, say it’s online, it may be to do with child protection issues—Gareth can speak about this more eloquently than I—and those sorts of things. They can become tick-box—you know, the bare minimum. Where we’re moving now with the whole idea of CPD is that it’s not that you go on a course, you know, and have a day out of school and then you come back and you’ve forgotten all about it, but, actually, the real CPD is professionals listening to other professionals, observing other professionals, seeing how they work, seeing how they interact. That’s going to require supply teachers to be built into that process and, I think, what we’ve already heard is that it’s difficult, because, as with the NQTs, they’re out of part of that process, unless they opt, in their own time, to do it. So, it’s the way in which, going back to the detail of the new deal, we’re going to be able to fit supply teachers in so that they can be observed, so that they can observe others and so they can have those conversations with their fellow professionals that really develop them and the really good CPD that I think we want to move the profession into.
[357] Mr Healey: If it becomes an entitlement, it then becomes a duty on the employer to provide as well, doesn’t it?
[358] Simon Thomas: Yes, well, this leads me to my final question.
[359] Mr Healey: It includes the agencies, doesn’t it?
[360] Simon Thomas: Yes, it does include the agencies, but it does beg the question: who’s the employer? In the past, we’ve had 22 local authorities running their own supply and so forth. That didn’t—I mean, those days are gone, anyway, but, to my mind, that didn’t necessarily provide that consistency of standard either, because it did vary from authority to authority, and we brought in the consortia to deal with that, of course. I don’t want you to discuss that at the moment, but—[Laughter.] We don’t have time. But the central question still remains: who’s the employer and who bears that responsibility? Do you have a view as an union as to whether that is actually deliverable with 40 plus—we heard even possibly 50—agencies, all competing for the supply pool in Wales? Just focusing on supply agencies now, do you have an alternative view about how the employer should be created for supply agencies and supply in Wales?
[361] Dr Dixon: Ideally, what we want to see is some sort of not-for-profit organisation. So, I think we’ve had discussions in the past about a, sort of, co-operative or something like that, because then the money would be kept in the system, and I think there would be greater control over that by practitioners and professionals themselves. So, that would be our ideal option, I think.
[362] Simon Thomas: The surplus that Gareth Lewis referred to could be channelled into CPD.
[363] Mr Lewis: Yes, I mean, if some of the costs that the school incurred went back into the school’s pot instead of a private company’s profits, then, you know, they would have some flexibility to provide training and so on and so forth.
[364] Simon Thomas: Diolch yn fawr.		Simon Thomas: Thank you.
[365] Ann Jones: Keith, the role of local authorities and regional consortia, but briefly.
[366] Keith Davies: Briefly, yes.
[367] Wel, rôl y consortia yw i wella ysgolion. Dyna brif rôl y consortia: gwella ysgolion. Nid wyf yn gwybod beth yw prif rôl awdurdodau addysg nawr, ond a ydych chi’n credu y dylai’r ddau ohonynt gael mwy o gyfrifoldeb am fonitro beth sy’n digwydd i athrawon cyflenwi, yn enwedig yn dilyn beth oedd Simon yn siarad amdano yn gynharach?		Well, the role of the consortia is to improve schools. That is the main role of consortia: to improve schools. I don’t know what the main role of education authorities is now, but do you think that both of them should have more responsibility for monitoring what happens to supply teachers, particularly following what Simon spoke about earlier?
[368] Mr Healey: We’ll start with Estyn. When Estyn come into a school, they make no allowance for a supply teacher being in front of a class. You know, they expect the school to have systems in place that would ensure that the quality of delivery under a supply teacher is every bit as good as under the permanent staff. The way the consortia appear to be developing is as a, sort of, local Estyn, so, you can imagine a similar role might well be appropriate. [Laughter.]
[369] Mr Lewis: You know, what you have is a system that is all about challenge, and there doesn’t seem to be, from my experience, the support mechanism, either from the local authority, because they’ve been cut back, or from GwE in the north. You know, they don’t have that capacity to support; it’s all about challenge. You are going back to what David started by saying: it’s about the data. It’s about the results—the scores on the doors. Are they up to scratch? Fine, the teaching must be good. Now, from experience going around schools in north Wales, some of the teaching in the good schools is pretty mediocre, but it is judged as good teaching. In some of the tough schools, I’ve seen some wonderful teaching, but they’re not good because the results aren’t good. So, I think we need to have more of a support mechanism, and that is to do with the quality of the teaching, whether it’s supply, permanent staff or long-term sickness cover, or whatever. They’ve got to try and look at that support mechanism and how we can make us better. As somebody approaching the end of their teaching career, the day I stop learning is the day I stop.
[370] Keith Davies: It might be interesting to note—I’m sorry to bring the National Union of Teachers into this now, right—that, in Sefton local authority, they’ve set up their own supply pool, and it’s run by two or three members of staff. But the teachers who are the supply teachers in Sefton get the proper rates, and pension arrangements are great. So, do you think that is something that, you know, should be pushed in Wales?
[371] Mr Lewis: There is a difficulty in there that, as a union, our paid staff are not members of our union; they belong to another union to protect their employment rights, and I think there is a difficulty if a union sets up an agency, because there becomes a conflict of interest then.
[372] Keith Davies: Yes, but I think they asked Sefton to set it up, so I think the people who run it are employed by Sefton and not by the NUT.
[373] Dr Dixon: We’ll have a look at that.
[374] Mr Healey: To come back to your earlier question, the key thing is what provision is made for the children, isn’t it? Now, if the consortia have a role in ensuring quality in all other aspects of a school’s work, why not in supply as well?
[375] Ann Jones: On supply agencies, Bethan.
[376] Bethan Jenkins: Obviously, we’ve touched on a lot of this already, and you would have heard some of the comments previously. So, it’s about, yes, the terms and conditions for your members, but also the quality of feedback, because we’re told that the passports by New Directions get sent to schools, but what type of feedback is then given to the teachers so that they know how they could potentially improve or change as opposed to being shuffled from perhaps one school to another if the school doesn’t find them desirable? Then, are there any other ways of doing this in Wales that may take the market out of the situation, although I’m sure the agencies would not find that very desirable?
[377] Mr Lewis: I think the answer to your question is—. How many agencies did you say there were—40 or 50?
[378] Simon Thomas: It was 40.
[379] Mr Lewis: And there’s a number wanting to come in because the profit margin—. I know somebody who runs an employment agency—quite a large one in the north of England and into Wales—and he’s thinking of moving into education because the profit margins are considerably greater than providing officer workers or factory workers or whatever. He’s a bit sorry that he’s late coming into the market, where it seems to be sorted out.
[380] Simon Thomas: He’d better get a move on then. [Laughter.]
[381] Mr Lewis: Yes. But, as the figures show, it’s an increasing market as well, isn’t it?
[382] Simon Thomas: We were told earlier that the number of supply teachers in Wales have not, in fact, increased, but the use of them, from the evidence that we’ve received, has increased. What’s the reason for that? Your survey suggests that stress has gone up a little bit as well, but is it because there’s more actual—. We’ve been giving time for teachers in the classroom to take time off—the 10 per cent and all the rest of it—and is it that we haven’t really factored that into our actual workforce planning so that we will be more reliant then on supply?
[383] Mr Lewis: In 2009 or 2010, when we actually went to the ‘rarely cover’ rule—. At one time teachers would cover for absent colleagues, but now it no longer applies. So, typically, as somebody who does short-term cover, I will get a phone call at 8 a.m., if I’m lucky, or at 8.30 a.m. or 8.45 a.m., asking, ‘Can I get to such and such a school?’ because somebody’s phoned in sick. That, in the past, we would have covered internally, but now we have to ring to get someone in. So, yes, the supply cover requirement has increased substantially. We would typically have not got a supply teacher in the past until the fourth or fifth day of absence because of the insurance arrangements that we have. Now, we’ve got to have a body in front of that class.
[384] Dr Dixon: I think it’s that allied with the other things that we’ve been talking about and it’s the increase in stress et cetera that has created that situation.
[385] Ann Jones: Bethan, are you happy?
[386] Bethan Jenkins: Yes, that’s fine.
[387] Ann Jones: Can I just ask one thing that struck me? I think Mr Lewis said that you ring up the school and say, ‘Oh, you want me for three days; that is fine, I’ll tell the agency.’ So, if that’s the case, why have we got the agencies?
[388] Mr Lewis: Part of the reason for that is that I tend to work in this one particular school long term. I didn’t want to work long term and I didn’t retire to work long term, but they keep asking me to go back and they will work around my other commitments to things.
[389] Ann Jones: So, that’s a specific case that you’ve built up with this one school, but there must be other teachers who have retired. This is the difference between newly qualified teachers and those who are towards the end or are retiring.
[390] Mr Lewis: But it’s the mechanism by which you can get paid. Some of the local authorities are actually ceasing to run a local authority pool, so there is no mechanism for getting paid other than going through an agency.
[391] Aled Roberts: North Wales didn’t move over to agencies until April.
[392] Bethan Jenkins: I suppose the question I have is the disciplinary one that I asked earlier, which was: do you feel that, for supply teachers, it triggers too much of the extremity of the situation as opposed to, if you were a normal teacher, having a staged approach to your potential disciplinary?
12:30
[393] Dr Dixon: Yes; I think supply teachers are normal teachers as well. [Laughter.]
[394] Mr Lewis: Speak for yourself. [Laughter.]
[395] Bethan Jenkins: Oh, no, I didn’t mean—. I knew as soon as I said it.
[396] Dr Dixon: More seriously, what we have found, I think, is that when the caseworkers have been dealing with teachers on supply, and then there are issues, things that would have been dealt with in the school aren’t, and the supply agency almost sort of washes their hands of it and it’s ratcheted up. We’ve had things being sent say to the old GTC, which should never have got there. So, that process is not there; it’s more precarious, I think. Yes, you’re right.
[397] Bethan Jenkins: So, what would be the answer to that, because I am conscious that people might not stay in the supply agency sector if they feel that they might hear from their colleagues that things are escalated when they don’t need to be? Is there sort of another process that could happen as opposed to it going straight to the workforce council?
[398] Dr Dixon: I think you need to have clear guidance about what needs to be referred to the workforce council and where things are appropriately dealt with and how employers should have in place the mechanisms for dealing with those. So, I think, especially some of the very small supply agencies—and I think some of them almost seem sort of one man and a dog—are just not able to deal with that. So, I think that if we had something there saying, ‘If you’re offering, these are the things you have to have in place’ that would cut out some of the very small ones, I think.
[399] Ann Jones: Okay. Has everybody—. Sorry?
[400] David Rees: Wouldn’t that be solved by the kitemark approach to ensure that those processes are in place within an agency, to avoid the escalation?
[401] Dr Dixon: Yes, I think that would probably be a step in the right direction and we’d have to see where we got to on that one because, again, you can do all that, and then in practice, you know—.
[402] David Rees: Oh, yes.
[403] Mr Lewis: It’s who’s going to monitor that. Is it a role for the local authorities or a role for the regional consortia to actually monitor whether it is actually happening as the tick-box scenario seems to imply?
[404] Ann Jones: Okay. Everybody happy? Thank you very much. Thank you for that session. We’ll send you a copy of the transcript to check for accuracy. It might give you a few nightmares, Mr Lewis, but never mind—
[405] Mr Lewis: I’ll be permanently retired. [Laughter.]
[406] Ann Jones: Yes, well, we can’t help you with that. [Laughter.] So, can you just check for accuracy and then that will form part of our report? I think there’s a couple of quotes there that we probably—. No, I jest. But thanks ever so much for that, and, as I say, if you just check for accuracy, and then we’ll send you a copy of the report when we’ve reached our conclusions. So, thanks all very much for that.
[407] Just to remind you, next week, we’re in private all meeting; there’s two sessions that we’ve got—one with the new children’s commissioner, and then one with Carol Shillabeer and Professor Sue Bailey. Okay, so thanks very much.
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Papurau i’w Nodi Papers to Note
[408] Ann Jones: There are papers to note as well, sorry; I’ve just been nudged in the right direction. There is a paper to note—a letter to the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, based on the recommendations in their committee report covering teacher absences.
[409] Aled Roberts: [Inaudible.]—taken up with the Government.
[410] Ann Jones: Okay. But it’s there to note, so we’ll note that. And if that’s okay, the meeting’s now closed. Thank you very much.
Daeth y cyfarfod i ben am 12:33. The meeting ended at 12:33.