Scottish Supply Teachers

This website was created in 2011 to share the truth behind the April 2011 pay deal as well as provide a place for supply teacher to communicate and help each other.

In April 2011 Supply Teachers were sold out in order to protect the further erosion of the working terms and conditions of our contracted colleagues.  The full impact of the Sell Out Deal is still to be felt by the profession but we, the Supply Teachers, are feeling it now! There has been a lack of transparency concerning this deal, with the truth masked and glossed over with glib sound bites and meaningless calculations, resulting in widespread confusion and ignorance. Educated, qualified, trained and experienced teachers are now being paid less than Classroom Assistants.

The most experienced Supply Teachers have taken the biggest cut in pay. Schools and Local Authorities are struggling to make sense of how to calculate the new terms and conditions of employment, and unfortunately, some are using the confusion and complexity in order to pay Supply

Teachers even less.

We now have a situation in this country where educated, skilled professionals are blatantly being told they are no longer valued, no longer as good as the contracted teacher in the classroom next to them, that their skills and expertise are not worthy of fair and hard earned re-numeration, that their time spent in the classroom is of little consequence to existing staff and pupils alike. But as a direct result of the SOD, many schools are now struggling to find emergency cover. Supply Teachers are, in some instances, refusing to work for the new daily rate.

In the news, then Education Secretary, Michael Russell, admitted there was a problem; schools were struggling, they couldn’t find Supply Teachers. Where once there were burgeoning Supply lists, groaning under the volume of names, now there are fewer and fewer people to call upon. His proposed solution is to train yet more teachers.  

 All the Scottish Government needs to do is re-instate the old terms and conditions of employment.

The question is will they do this, and will they do this before the vast majority of us have been unceremoniously forced to leave Teaching, in order to earn a living wage elsewhere?