Schools in England spend roughly £1.4 billion a year on agency supply staff. Until this year, what an agency charged on top of a teacher's pay was largely a matter of negotiation, and it varied enormously from one school to the next.
That has changed. The Crown Commercial Service became the Government Commercial Agency (GCA) on 1 April 2026, and RM6376 Supply Teachers and Education Recruitment went live shortly after, running to 30 April 2029.
The part everyone in our industry is doing sums over: from September 2026, academy trusts must buy supply staff through the framework unless they can evidence an alternative that is Procurement Act 2023 compliant and no more expensive (DfE guidance on the mandate).
There is a fair amount of concern about this. I think some of it is warranted and some of it isn't.
Here's my read.
What the fee cap actually does
RM6376 caps the supplier fee (the agency's mark-up) by role. These are the published maximums, taken directly from the DfE:
Role category Max daily supplier fee
Senior roles (headteacher / SLT) £55
STEM teachers £45
Non-STEM teachers £40
Educational support staff (SEND) £38
Educational support staff (non-SEND) £36
Facilities management £36
Other roles £34
Admin and clerical £32
Two things worth being clear on.
First, this caps your margin, not teacher pay. Worker pay, employer NI, pension and holiday pay all sit outside the cap and are itemised separately. Nobody's take-home is dropping. The DfE has been blunt about this, asking schools to report any agency claiming it has to pay supply workers less because of the mandate. Quite right too.
Second, it's a real cut. The DfE's published worked example breaks a £308 daily charge into £200 candidate pay, £37 on-costs and a £71 supplier fee, described as a real example of what a school was charged. Against the caps, that school saves at least £26 a day per candidate. If £71 is anywhere near your book, that margin has gone by rule, not by negotiation.
It's also worth noting the caps are ceilings, not rates. Many agencies have submitted lower fees, and schools can see them on the GCA Agency Supply Portal.
So what does this mean for the average desk?
Strip it back. If price is fixed and everyone can see everyone else's price, you can only really pull three levers.
1. What it costs you to find a teacher. This is the big one, and I'd argue it's the one most agencies are least prepared for.
The sector has spent years solving candidate shortages by spending more money: more job board slots, more sponsored posts, more referral bounties, more PPC on the same twelve keywords everyone else is bidding on. That works when your fee is flexible. It works a lot less well at £40 a day.
2. How many bookings you fill, and how fast. With a fixed fee per booking, volume and fill rate are the levers that make back what the cap took. A slow desk and a busy desk now look very different on a P&L.
3. Whether schools rate you. Because submitted fees are visible on the portal, a school can compare suppliers in a couple of clicks, and will mostly find everyone clustered near the cap. When price stops separating you, the decision moves to service: did you fill it, did you fill it quickly, was the teacher any good, and is your safeguarding watertight.
Where TeachR fits (and where it doesn't) I should declare the obvious interest here: I run TeachR, so read this section accordingly.
TeachR exists because the relationship between teachers and agencies is broken at both ends. Teachers can't easily see which agencies pay properly, so many end up on rates well below what they should be earning. Agencies, meanwhile, all compete for the same candidates through the same expensive channels, and pass that cost on.
We're a shared pool rather than another job board. Teachers register once, stay anonymous until they choose otherwise, and compare agencies on pay and terms without being pursued. For agencies, that means acquisition cost is spread across the platform rather than every agency independently bidding up the price of the same twelve candidates, and the teachers you reach genuinely aren't the same CVs already sitting in four competitors' CRMs.
The Agency Ratings Index (in development) is aimed squarely at lever three: independent evidence of service quality that you can point a school towards, which beats anything you write about yourself.
What we don't do: TeachR does not run your compliance. No vetting, no DBS processing, no KCSiE audit trail. A compliance layer is on the roadmap, but it isn't in the product today and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. Your vetting stays yours. We sit upstream and feed candidates into the process you already run. Honestly, that's the right order. What you need before September is candidate supply and a good answer to "why you", not another compliance system.
If you're not on the framework
Your market gets smaller in September, but it doesn't disappear.
· Local authority maintained schools can use RM6376 but aren't mandated to. · Independent schools cannot access the framework at all.
· Trusts can stay off-framework where the arrangement is PA23 compliant and rates don't exceed framework rates.
· Trusts aren't being forced out of existing contracts, but DfE recommends they benchmark at renewal.
It's also worth thinking about the next window. Whenever RM6376 reopens, the agencies that bid well will be the ones with evidence: fill rates, service ratings, safeguarding record. You can't build that in the week the tender drops.
Quick answers
Does the cap reduce supply teacher pay? No. It caps the agency supplier fee only. Worker pay, NI, pension and holiday pay sit outside it, and DfE has explicitly asked schools to report agencies claiming otherwise.
Do agencies have to be on RM6376? No. But from September 2026, academy trusts must use it unless their alternative is compliant and no more expensive.
When did the GCA replace the CCS? 1 April 2026. RM6376 runs to 30 April 2029.
Are the capped rates what agencies will charge? They're maximums. Many suppliers submitted lower, and those rates are published on the GCA portal.
What else changed? A 12-week free temp-to-perm provision (four weeks' notice), a nominated worker route, and standardised call-off terms. DfE warns trusts that signing agency-specific T&Cs instead of GCA call-off terms can void the framework's protections.
The bottom line
Margin is capped, price is public, and service quality is the differentiator that's left. My honest view: the agencies that spend this summer fixing their candidate supply will be fine. The ones still re-reading the rate card in August won't. TeachR is live and taking agency partners now. Get in touch if you'd like to talk about what your cost-per-candidate looks like under the cap.
Informational only. Not procurement or legal advice. Check the current Academy Trust Handbook and GCA guidance before making decisions. Views expressed are my own.
Jack Foskett - Co-founder TeachR
Sources · DfE: A better deal on agency supply staff (Buying for Schools blog, 29 April 2026) · DfE: Guidance on supply staff mandate · DfE: Supply Teachers and Education Recruitment framework overview · GCA: RM6376 agreement page · GCA Agency Supply Portal: submitted supplier rates · Procurement Act 2023