AIBU to think Supply Teachers Should be Paid WAY More?

I’m on the fence with this in all honesty .

Im a supply teacher . I am M1 and I get £140 per day which is a few pound under the equivalent daily rate for M1 before the recent pay rise ( it would now be £153.00 ) . I think , for day to day , that’s fair . We don’t work holidays and don’t get paid for them - it’s not easy as I have to work a second job in the holidays , but supply was a personal choice . I think if you’re a higher pay scale then you should be paid more ( I know UPS teachers on the same daily rate as me which is awful ) .

However , getting paid the same as a teacher who is salaried? Well , for a start no teacher would be in a full time role they would all be in supply. There is absolutely no way that us supply teachers - on day to day at least - do anywhere near as much as full time CT’s do. As a day to day supply I go in , teach whatever has been pre planned for me , mark what I have taught and leave just after the children do. I don’t have to work through my lunch ( unless I decide to mark then so I can leave straight away - which I usually do as I am bored in the lunch hour ) , I have no responsibility over the class in the long term , I don’t have to do a single thing or think of anything at all outside of work hours . It’s easy . Behaviour management can be difficult but if it’s too bad I know I have one day there and I can say I don’t want to go back . I have worked full time in a permanent position and I had no life . I worked in the evenings , weekends , holidays and it was awful . In no way at all do I think my job as a supply is anywhere near as demanding as it is being a full time class teacher .

Im in a long term at the moment , with no planning , but I will be assessing etc and I am staying later and having to think about work outside of work so a part of me thinks maybe I should get a little more and I will broach the subject of AWR but still it’s nothing like the other teachers .

What needs to be done instead is working at making life bearable for teachers and taking pressure off so people like me don’t feel so overwhelmed and miserable that they leave to go into supply just to have a life .

So, why is supply teaching paid at less than the normal teaching rate

To encourage you to take a permanent teaching job in a school.

There are also lots of ex-teachers with different levels of experience who could in theory turn to supply teaching. Like with every other industry I know if there are lots of people who could do a job and there is no immediate risk to health, then pay goes down. (The fact that people don't want to do a particular job for good reasons doesn't seem to factor.)

I like supply work and I think I'm good at it. My agency rate is £130/day before tax, no pension, sick pay etc. and my daily rate as UPS3 with a TLR is around £230. So YANBU in that I am worse off on supply.

However, like many public services schools are squeezed and use supply far less than they did, covering classes with support staff or putting classes together to save money. So I'm not sure putting up supply rates would help, unless more schools were prepared to employ bank staff on zero hours and cut out the agencies.

a supply teacher (unless long term) comes in for the day and teaches a pre planned lesson. They don’t take over all the responsibility of the teacher (planning, marking etc) and therefore probably don’t need an uplift on the normal teachers salary.

not saying it’s easy but probably not comparable to other jobs where they do exactly the same as what the normal employee would do.

https://www.nasuwt.org.uk/advice/supply-teacher/supply-teachers-pay/supply-teachers-pay-england.html

Looking at the Union website, it is only a problem for supply teachers working through agencies. Working directly for the school or LA, you would get the same pay as any other teacher.

Forgot to add, here in Northern Ireland, the supply teacher daily rate is the annual salary divided by the 195 school days. So a supply teacher who works every school day is no worse off over the year (except for cash flow during the holidays).

I do agree that it should attract a premium though, to compensate for the uncertainty.

You're not wrong. Unfortunately, I think a fair whack of teachers would leave their work and go into supply instead, so the government suppresses supply teacher pay to stop this.