Young pay price of teaching agencies
SO school leaders are concerned about the drop in grades for English, maths and Welsh second language GCSE results (WalesOnline, August 22).
Fair Deal for Supply Teachers campaign group has long highlighted the lowering of standards due to the use of cover supervisors in schools.
We did our own FOIs – with the results coming out as 10% of lessons taken by cover supervisors in secondary schools. Cover supervisors do not need English and maths GCSE, yet they take classes. They are not supposed to teach but can end up doing so, as young people ask questions and there is a fine line between teaching and responding to these questions.
The use of cover supervisors appears to be an attempt to save money by schools, but another reason is the inability of schools to always find a qualified teacher to cover for an absent teacher.
Likewise, in some primary schools the use of teaching assistants happens because an agency can’t find a supply teacher that day, or the class might be split between a number of other classes and left work “to get on with”.
Qualified teachers don’t like being paid less money than they were promised when they started their teaching courses and “vote with their feet”, finding alternative employment.
On top of not liking to be paid less, many teachers from newly qualified to experienced cannot afford to live on the low wages paid by agencies so have no choice but to go elsewhere to make a living.
Agencies take around 30% of the teachers’ salary daily, whether a teacher is on short-term or longterm supply cover. Many school leaders have become complacent and do not seek to employ teachers directly through councils, which would give teachers a proper living wage with a better pension when they retire.
Ultimately young people in Wales are paying the price for the use of agencies. It does not happen in Scotland or Northern Ireland where all teachers are paid directly through local authorities, as they were previously in Wales. In England wages are usually far higher through agencies than in Wales.
I expect in December when the next lot of PISA test results come out, as happened in the 2015 tests, Welsh students will be behind their English and Northern Irish counterparts again.
It’s a pity Welsh Government hasn’t yet seen fit to put into practice regulations or ultimately legislation that would end the enormous profits agencies make, thus putting taxpayers’ money back into education and raising standards that are so badly needed in Wales. K Davies
Newport