Supplying Teachers Online Saves East Riding 60,000 in a Year

The council has purchased state-of-the-art software to enable it to manage its own pool of supply teachers more effectively, increase efficiency and save money on manual systems and recruitment agency fees.

Stephen Hunter, teacher supply project manager, East Riding of Yorkshire Council said: The software will enable many improvements and we expect to produce a saving over current recruitment methods of around 60,000 in the first year. The Eteach temporary staff management solution is already used by many other local authorities and has a proven track record of success.íí

The new system will speed up the process and allow schools and supply teachers to search for the specialist teachers and positions they want.

Schools in the East Riding have been using various paper based methods to keep track of supply teachers but the new system will speed up the process and provide an audit-trail relating to security checks on teachers, as well as enhancing communication and flexibility.

The local authority wanted to provide a better service to schools and teachers while also working towards fulfilling the criteria for the Quality Mark award from the DfES.

After an extensive research, consultation and tender process, the council decided to implement a suitable online system in conjunction with Eteach.

On the Eteach programme all teacher details, including security checks, employment history, areas of expertise and preferred working area will be held online.

Mr Hunter added: Teachers can specifically exclude schools where they donít want to work and schools can exclude teachers they do not wish to employ. Schools will be able to search in seconds for teachers on the basis of subject specialism or key stage.

The system lists suitable teachers and shows the distance from the teacher?s home to the school and how many times he/she has been booked by the school. This helps generate a cohort of trusted teachers who are familiar with the school. Advance bookings can be made which will help schools to plan ahead.

The eteach.com system will link into the East Riding Intranet service which already joins all the schools in the East Riding.

Mr Hunter added: This new system will help schools, supply teachers and the council. Teachers hours will be booked automatically online, school staff will log in, check and approve the time sheets and make any changes, then send the details directly to the payroll system. This eliminates the need to re-key data and saves on postage and administration time and reduces the possibility of error.