Supply Teachers deal helps Academies Enterprise Trust secure quality candidates and achieve savings

The Academies Enterprise Trust (AET) has 62 academies. They spent £4.6 million on supply staff in 2017/18, making it the trust’s 6th highest area of spend. Academies in the trust were sourcing temporary staff from 95 agencies, with supply being managed by each academy. The terms of the contracts often favoured the supply agencies, rather than the academies. The approach also meant that AET was not compliant with the public contracts regulations, and struggled to manage their supplier relationships.

The challenge

AET had 3 main requirements when it began its procurement review:

• source quality candidates
• ensure safeguarding of pupils
• make cost savings

How we helped

Using lot 1 of the Supply Teachers framework, AET began negotiations with the 16 agencies that their academies were using most often. These agencies accounted for £2.2 million of their annual spend. They used the rates they were paying the agencies versus the maximum framework rates to negotiate cost savings.

AET then approached the rest of the suppliers they were using, who were also accredited framework suppliers, to negotiate more value for money deals.

The 3rd stage was to have discussions with framework suppliers who have low mark-ups, but AET weren’t currently using.

The aim of these negotiations was to develop a preferred supplier list. Throughout the process the CCS Supply Teachers team fully supported AET. Clive Hammond, Head of Procurement commented:

The team was extremely helpful in resolving queries from the trust and suppliers for whom this was the first time that they had been through the process, especially for a large multi academy trust.

Results

AET launched their new preferred supplier list in January 2019. It includes 40 accredited framework suppliers who offer the trust the best value for money.

The suppliers on the list hold industry standard accreditation, giving assurance that candidates undergo thorough safeguarding checks.

In the first 5 months the academies have been happy with the standard of candidates that supply agencies are able to offer us.

AET predict that using the CCS deal has identified cashable savings of £119,000 in the first year, when compared to the rates paid in 2017/18. This is a saving of 6.55%.

By choosing to use the CCS Supply Teachers deal AET ensured that they were compliant with UK public contracts regulations. This removed the need to run their own procurement, which would have been time consuming and expensive.

What’s next for AET?

Confident that they are getting quality teachers, they are now working closely with their academies to help them reduce supply staff spend further. Meetings between academies and suppliers are creating direct relationships, making them the first point of contact for the academies, rather than them relying on historical relationships. This will further increase the savings opportunities for the trust, as the academies move away from suppliers charging higher mark-ups, to ones offering better value for money.

Longer term AET is looking to work closer with other multi-academy trusts as by combining resources they can make even more savings for their academies.

Learn more

Visit the supply teachers web page for more information about getting started.

Got a question?

• call us on 0345 410 2222
• email the team
• fill in our online contact form