Blog by Flexzo
Teaching Jobs Through Agencies vs Direct Platforms
Most education professionals find supply work through a recruitment agency. It is the default route, and for many it is the only one they know exists. But the agency model has well-documented costs for both teachers and educational settings, and a growing number of education professionals are choosing direct platforms instead.
This article sets out how both routes work, what they mean for your pay and rights, and how to decide which approach suits you.
How the Agency Model Works
When you register with a supply teaching agency, the agency becomes your employer for the duration of your placements. Educational settings contact the agency when they need cover, the agency contacts you, and the setting pays the agency a daily rate. The agency passes a portion of that on to you and retains the rest as its margin.
That margin is not small. Department for Education research found that schools were paying close to 100% more than supply teachers themselves received. A school paying over £200 a day might be passing on £110 or £130 to the teacher. The difference goes to the agency.
The Crown Commercial Service, which operates the government’s framework for schools hiring supply teachers, has noted that before its framework was introduced, the average agency markup was 38%. In practice, outside any framework, markups vary considerably and are rarely disclosed to the teacher without asking.
The agency model also has implications beyond the daily rate. Because agency supply teachers are not employed directly by the school or local authority, they cannot access the Teachers’ Pension Scheme. TPS access is only available to supply teachers employed directly by a school or local authority. Agencies must offer a workplace pension scheme, but it is separate from the TPS and typically carries employer contributions at the statutory minimum.
What Direct Platforms Offer
A direct platform connects education professionals with educational settings without an agency sitting in between. The setting books you directly, you are employed by the setting or agree terms directly, and there is no intermediary taking a margin from what the setting pays.
The practical differences for an education professional are straightforward:
For settings, direct booking also removes finder’s fee clauses, which under agency contracts can run to thousands of pounds when they want to hire a supply teacher permanently.
Why not download our free E-book to learn how you can land more school placements without using an agency?
Pay and Rights: The Key Differences
The employment arrangement you enter shapes your legal rights as much as it shapes your pay.
Agency supply teachers are employed by the agency, not the setting. Placements can end with little notice, and the pay rate is set by the agency. This is independent of the School Teachers’ Pay and Conditions Document (STPCD), so rates are not guaranteed to reflect your STPCD experience point. After 12 consecutive weeks in the same role at the same setting, the Agency Workers Regulations 2010 entitle you to equal pay with a directly employed teacher, but before that threshold there is no statutory floor beyond the National Minimum Wage.
Where you are employed directly by a setting (even on a short-term or supply basis), the STPCD applies from day one. Pay is calculated at the appropriate point on the Main or Upper Pay Range, and you contribute to the Teachers’ Pension Scheme automatically unless you choose to opt out.
In essence, this means two teachers, who are doing identical work on the same day at the same setting can have entirely different pay arrangements depending on how they were booked.
For a fuller picture of how temporary and permanent employment terms compare, our article on permanent vs temporary teaching jobs sets out the employment rights specific to each contract type.
The Scale of the Problem
The figures around agency supply spending in England are striking. According to DfE research into the use of supply teachers, schools spent £1.4 billion on agency supply teachers in 2023-24. That is public money flowing through commercial intermediaries rather than reaching the teachers doing the work or the learners in the classroom.
The DfE research also found that supply teachers were largely dissatisfied with their pay, and that most school leaders disagreed that the current agency system represented good value for money. The National Education Union has documented these concerns in detail, including the TPS exclusion and the impact of agency markups on take-home pay. The government has since announced plans to introduce rate caps on agency markups through a new Crown Commercial Service framework due in 2026, which signals how significant the issue has become at a policy level.
For individual education professionals, the practical implication is simple: the route through which you access work determines a meaningful proportion of what you actually earn.
Choosing The Right Route For You
Neither agencies nor direct platforms are the right choice in every situation. Agencies offer established networks, administrative support, and in some regions a higher volume of daily work than any single platform can match. If you are new to supply teaching and want a quick route into work while your compliance documents are processed, an agency can provide that.
Direct platforms tend to work better for education professionals who want more control over their rate and their availability, who are open to a wider range of role types and settings, or who want the flexibility of a direct booking without the opacity of agency terms.
The two are not mutually exclusive. Many education professionals register with both, using each for different purposes
Frequently Asked Questions
Get in Touch
If you have questions about finding teaching roles or want to understand how Flexzo Teach works, the team is happy to help.
Visit our contact page or register as an educator to get started.
