For Shaw Education Trust (SET), a multi-academy trust of 31 schools across England, supply staffing had become one of the largest and least controlled areas of expenditure, with annual costs rising to over £5 million*. SET took a step back and asked a simple but powerful question:
Are we using public money in the best possible way for children? Kerry Inscker the CEO, set a clear mission: “To implement a compliant, transparent supply model that drives down agency costs and improves financial oversight”.
Your trust could be in a similar position. Here is how SET identified the problem - and why acting early made all the difference.
The warning signs were there
Schools across the trust were engaging multiple agencies under different commercial terms. There was limited central oversight of spend, quality or safeguarding. Agency charges lacked transparency, with little visibility of margins or mark-ups. Some arrangements carried extended fees after long-term placements, and there were potential IR35 (off-payroll working rules) risks linked to unclear worker status.
Perhaps most importantly, safeguarding processes were not consistently assured at trust level.
This fragmentation is not unique to SET. Schools across England collectively spend £1.4 billion a year on agency staff. The Department for Education (DfE) has identified national concerns about this spending and introduced a more structured and compliant procurement approach - but in practice, many trusts were not fully equipped to challenge whether their arrangements were genuinely compliant.
The pressure to accept the status quo
SET also faced consistent commercial pressure from parts of the agency market. Messaging frequently implied that agencies held exclusive access to certain candidates, and that securing high-quality staff meant accepting higher fee structures. This made schools feel exposed and operationally vulnerable - reinforcing fragmented working practices and limiting the trust's ability to act strategically.
Shaw Education Trust's review posed a clear question: was the trust fully compliant, achieving value for money, and safeguarding pupils effectively? The honest answer was that it could not be certain.
In the next post, we explain how SET built its solution: the framework it aligned with, the master vendor approach it adopted, and why choosing the right partner mattered as much as the structure itself.
This blog was produced in collaboration between the DfE Maximising Value for Pupils programme team and Shaw Education Trust to share good practice and help every pound deliver for children. Connex is one of over 200 agencies that have been awarded to the framework agreement.
*Figures supplied by Shaw Education Trust and have not been verified by the Department for Education.
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