“Failure to get a grip on the recruitment and retention crisis has led to an increase in demand for supply staff that is completely unsustainable. While we would support a review of incentives to aid recruitment of students into Initial Teacher Education, boosting starting salaries is likely to have a much greater impact, as would addressing the workload crisis our profession continues to face. Any recruitment and retention strategy must be based around improving teacher pay and conditions, and ensuring this is affordable for all schools.

“We support calls for the Welsh Government to respond to the IWPRB review on supply teachers’ pay and conditions and there should be consideration given to including supply teachers under the provisions of the STPC(W)D. This would protect supply teachers’ terms and conditions as well as helping school leaders to manage their budgets.”