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Response by the Cabinet Member: The figures provided are the overall spend by schools against supply agencies for each financial year. The information about the nature and length of each booking sits an individual school level based on their individual requirements. The figures have been reviewed and there is an update in respect of the 2022-23 figure: • 2022–2023: £2.6 million • 2023–2024: £3.5 million • 2024–2025: £3.1 million • 2025–2026: £3.3 million The figures for directly employed supply staff are as follows: • 2022–2023: £1.7 million • 2023–2024: £1.8 million • 2024–2025: £1.8 million • 2025–2026: £1.8 million Each school takes part in financial surgeries across the year, and expenditure is also scrutinised by individual governing bodies, where discussions about the level of expenditure on supply and all other aspects of the budget will take place. As schools fully moved away from the COVID pandemic, they returned to business as usual, which includes engagement in professional learning and local, regional, and national networks. Engagement in activity such as this will require, in many cases, the use of supply cover to enable the relevant member of staff to be released. As there are a number of small schools within Powys, there is less flexibility within working structures, so should a member of staff need to engage in professional learning or local or regional networks, they would likely need to book supply cover to enable their attendance. In addition, there have been key reforms to the education system in Wales over recent years, including the introduction of the Curriculum for Wales and the Additional Learning Needs system. Schools received funding in respect of both of these key areas of work in order to release staff to ensure that they are able to deliver in line with these education reforms. This would have required, in many cases, the need for schools to book supply cover to release key members of staff to ensure that staff in Powys schools are able to implement these key educational changes. There is no nationally available benchmarking data on supply expenditure. However, as of October 2023, it was noted that the Education Workforce Council (EWC) register showed ‘that the balance between the number of supply teachers registered with an agency and the number registered with local authorities has shifted significantly towards agencies, with agency registration now 81.3%.’1[1] [1] Independent Welsh Pay Review Body, October 2023, ‘A Review of the Roles and Responsibilities of Supply Teachers in Wales Employed through Local Authorities or Directly by Schools’, accessed 05.01.2026, p. 26
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