I'd like to spread the word about what is going on with private teaching agencies in Wales. In a nutshell they are concerned only with profit and not with continuity of cover for your child. In secondary schools, they are even sending out often unqualified staff as "Cover Supervisors" (Google this) who are paid less and who basically just babysit. Cover Supervisors are not meant to undertake any teaching or even mark work. They could be untrained LSAs or people who have a degree but no qualified teacher status. They may know absolutely nothing about Maths, Science, Spanish or whatever they are covering. Schools are complicit in this, unfortunately, but for obvious reasons will not want this to be widely known. As much as 10% of your child's education will be taken by supply teachers or "not" teachers (as the case may be) so please start asking questions about who exactly IS supervising your child at school and write to your Assembly member or Welsh Government. Any comments from supply teachers in England would be most welcomed as I'd like to know if it's the same over the border. I know school budgets are limited but the fact also that 45% of schools' supply teacher budgets is being creamed off by agencies in commission is absolutely obscene. Agencies care only about profit; they have no qualms about sending three or four teachers in one week to one class rather than provide continuity of cover. They will also send teachers anywhere without matching their skills and experience to that setting eg autistic units, sending FE trained teachers/lecturers to cover early years classes. I worked for over two years without even basic safeguarding training. I eventually discovered that I was able to do this free of charge via my local authority, which I did. Finally, as these agencies also provide LSAs to schools, some are even recruiting using the streamline, "Never worked in education? Not a problem..."