Education Boss Raises Concerns With BIS About New 'supplementary Guidance For Agency Supply Teachers'.

The new Agency Workers Regulation (AWR) is implemented only three weeks after the schools return in September. And, at last, the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS) has released the supplementary guidance for agency supply teachers.

The supplementary guidance is published separately to the BIS main guidance and it addresses issues relating to agency supply teachers and the application of the Agency Workers Regulation 2010 which comes into force on 1 October 2011.

The guidance kicks off with the legal definition of ‘hirer’ – sub-divided into maintained schools, academies and independent schools. But according to Randstad Education UK, the ‘hirer’ definition doesn’t go far enough to explain the distinction between maintained schools (where the governing body is the hirer), or the local authority itself. The guidance notes provided by BIS and the DfE leave this open to interpretation and it’s not clear who they are expecting to make the decision. Supply teachers working for multiple agencies could suffer a detriment, if this isn’t clear. This could leave agencies and schools exposed to potential claims for unfair treatment in an employment tribunal.

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Says Randstad Education UK strategic operations manager Stewart McCoy: “Some Authorities are of the opinion that, for maintained schools, the LA would be the hirer in all cases, since they would always have ultimate responsibility if there were a legal process or tribunal for both permanent and temporary staff. How –legally - will one justify a distinction between the two, despite schools having a governing body in place?”

Unfortunately, further study doesn’t make it any more user-friendly. For example, Academies, Free Schools and independent schools are free to set their own pay and conditions of employment, but the pay scales for teachers in schools maintained by a local authority are set out in the School Teachers’ Pay and Conditions Document – while of course remembering that these don’t cover teaching assistants or cover supervisors.

The guidance notes refer to ‘supervision and direction’ but again this could be different depending on the existence of a legal entity. “Who in the school will be the appointed supervisor and director in the legal sense?” asks Mr McCoy. “It’s surely important that we all know before there’s a problem?”

And when defining ‘the qualifying period’ the supply teacher guidance is vague unless the main guidance is studied in tandem; “This will result in a variety of interpretations,” questions Mr McCoy, who concludes: “It will be only a few weeks after the schools return in September before AWR is implemented. Schools and LEAs are craving information from us and there’s a real sense of urgency here. But until I’ve received clarification from BIS we are delaying giving schools further advice. Guidance open to interpretation will fill the sector with different messages, confusion and – ultimately – errors. Will the DfE be troubleshooting this issue?”