12th August 2019
The Crown Commercial Service supply teacher and temporary staff agreement can be used to recruit all temporary and fixed-term teaching and support staff. The agreement is endorsed by the Department for Education and ensures that schools get the best deal when recruiting supply staff, in terms of compliance, safeguarding, transparency and fees. At Engage, we’re proud to be a named supplier on the agreement and we’d like to let you know how the deal can work for you, too.
The CCS agreement can be used to hire contingency cover teaching and non-teaching staff, long-term supply work, and fixed-term teaching and non-teaching roles. However, the deal isn’t just for teachers and support staff; schools can also use the framework to hire within IT, finance, clerical, administrative, maintenance, and almost any other temporary worker needed within a school setting.
The deal can be used to hire all day-to-day contingency supply teaching and non-teaching staff, as well as fixed-term contract roles.
If your school wants to transfer a worker you have hired on the CCS framework to a permanent role, doing so after 12 weeks won’t cost anything extra, provided you give 4 weeks’ notice.
If you know a worker you would like to fill a temporary vacancy, but want to hire them on CCS terms, you can refer them to a CCS supplier in order to do this. This is referred to as a nominated worker, and will usually cost less than using an agency worker.
As part of the agreement to be a CCS supplier, agencies are required to be open about their rates, showing the mark-up we make when you use us to find your supply teachers and support staff. This is a great step forward for education recruitment, as we have always believed that transparency in cost makes for a closer relationship between schools and the supplier.
Often, a teacher gets on so well at a school, that the school will want to hire them as a permanent member of staff. When this happens, the agency can charge the school a “temp-to-perm” fee.
Every agency named on the CCS suppliers list have agreed to limit their term-to-perm fees, and will not charge you at all if the worker you want to hire has been in post for over 12 weeks and you give 4 weeks notice.
All agencies on the deal must complete background and safeguarding checks on every teacher and member of support staff they work with. As part of this imperative, agencies are required to perform face-to-face interviews – a practice that Engage has always championed, due to the extra level of intuition that meeting someone in person provides.
Using the CCS supply teachers deal gives you peace of mind that your agency has checked:
Every agency should be completing these standards as a matter of best practice, but when you work with a CCS supplier, you know that evidence of these best practices has been provided to the CCS. If your school is working with an agency that isn’t on the CCS preferred suppliers list, there is no assurance that your agency meets all current legislative requirements or is in line with EU procurement legislation.
To be named on the CCS’ list of suppliers, all agencies have to prove they have been accredited by one of three relevant auditing bodies. These bodies make sure all agencies have sound recruitment processes and audit them to make sure the terms of the CCS deal are complied with. At Engage, we’re accredited by the REC (Recruitment & Employment Confederation), who ensure their members have the tools needed to be a compliant and efficient recruitment business.
When an agency joins the REC, they sign up to the REC Code of Professional Practice, which requires basic statutory compliance with industry legislation as well as higher ethical standards. At Engage, we meet the highest standards of the REC audit and have achieved their Gold Standard.
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To find out more, you can visit the Crown Commercial Service’s page on Supply Teachers and Temporary Staff in Educational Establishments, the Government’s page on the Deal for Schools: Hiring Supply Teachers and Agency Workers, or get in touch with Engage to discuss the framework with a member of our expert team.
To find out how working with a preferred supplier could work for you, register with Engage. We have great connections with schools around the country who are always looking to fill their day-to-day and long term supply needs, and our local consultants will help you find one that matches your skills and ambitions. (Otherwise, why not take a look at some of our current vacancies here.)
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