FOI Request - Supply Teachers - Numbers and Proportion of Workforce

Request 101003854054

Please provide the following recorded information for school/education services for the period academic years 2015/16 through 2024/25 year-to-date (or financial years if that is how you hold the data—please state which).

A. Supply teachers – volume and capacity

For each year in scope, for supply/relief/bank/agency teachers engaged to deliver teaching (GTCS-registered), please provide:

1. Unique headcount of supply teachers engaged (at least one day).
2. Total days or hours worked by supply teachers.
3. If available, the FTE equivalent represented by (2) and the method used to convert (e.g., days ÷ 195, or hours ÷ [your full-time hours]).
4. Where held, a split between council bank/relief and external agency supply.

B. Proportion (“rate”) of overall workforce

For each year, please provide the teacher workforce denominator:
1. Total teacher FTE (all permanent + fixed-term teachers in schools).
2. Using your figures (A3 ÷ B1), please provide or enable calculation of the percentage share of supply FTE of the overall teacher FTE.
– If you do not calculate this internally, supplying (A3) and (B1) is sufficient.

C. Expenditure and rates
For each year:
1. Total gross spend on supply teachers.
2. If applicable, spend broken down by bank/relief vs external agency and, where readily available, by agency/framework.
3. Any standard rate cards or framework daily/hourly rates applied (with effective dates).

D. Reason for supply usage (if routinely recorded)
Annual totals of supply days/hours by reason category (e.g., sickness absence, parental leave, vacancies, CPD/INSET cover, other). Provide categories/definitions used.

E. Definitions, policy and procurement
1. Your definition of “supply teacher” and any codes used to distinguish supply from other temporary arrangements (e.g., instructors/cover supervisors).
2. Current policy/procedure for engaging supply teachers (including any bank sign-up requirements).
3. Any current contracts/frameworks for supply, with names/refs and term dates.

F. Management information
Any management/committee reports since 1 August 2023 that summarise supply teacher usage, spend, or market conditions within Education/Children’s Services.

Format
Please supply data in a machine-readable format (CSV or XLSX). For datasets, fields such as year, supply_days, supply_hours, supply_fte, teacher_fte_total, spend_total, reason_category, bank_or_agency are ideal.

Disclosure control / personal data
Aggregate, anonymised figures only; no personal data is requested. Apply standard disclosure control (e.g., suppress values <5) if necessary.

Advice & assistance / cost
If you estimate this may exceed the section 12 cost limit, please advise under section 15 how I can refine the scope—for example, by providing service-level totals first, reducing the timeframe, or omitting breakdowns not routinely reported.

Published information
If any of the information is already published (section 25), please provide the direct URL and the precise location (document/table).

Information not held / exemptions
If any part is not held (section 17), please say so explicitly. If information is withheld, please provide a schedule of items withheld, the exemption/exception relied upon (e.g., s30/s33 FOISA), and the public-interest test where applicable.