Trusts know their supply spend. Few understand the drivers
English schools and trusts spent £1.4 billion on supply staff in 2023-24. Among multi-academy trusts with six or more schools, average spend is £1.13 million. Trusts of similar size and context can spend three to four times more than peers.
The DfE is calling on every leader to examine their workforce cost data. With the Crown Commercial Service launching a new supply framework in June 2026, introducing negotiated caps on agency fees, trusts that already understand their supply position will be far better placed to plan and budget with confidence.
ImpactEd Group provides specialist, evidence-led insight for education organisations. We help leaders make sense of their data and act on it with confidence, including on supply spend, one of the most complex cost lines a trust manages.
Download our free resource for trust leaders
Book a 30-minute exploratory call
The scale of the challenge, and what is about to change
1 in 10 academy trusts spend more than 5% of their total budget on supply staff, more than double the national average. Some exceed 10%. Nearly 14,000 teachers are absent across England every day. Average daily agency rates range from £218 in primary to £291 in secondary, and 93% of state school vacancies are filled through agencies.
In June 2026, the Crown Commercial Service will launch a new framework capping fees and margins charged by supply agencies. Schools will be expected to use it unless they can demonstrate better value elsewhere — and the DfE has explicitly called on trust leaders to benchmark their workforce costs against similar schools.
For trusts with high agency reliance or limited spend visibility, the transition will be harder. For those with a clear picture already, it's an opportunity to plan ahead with confidence.
Why similar trusts spend very differently
Sector-wide pressures, including rising daily rates, workforce shortages and agency dependency, affect every multi-academy trust. They do not explain why trusts of comparable size and context can spend three to four times more per pupil than their peers. The biggest differentiator tends to be what happens inside schools.
Teacher sickness and absence patterns
Teacher sickness is one of the most significant variables in the data, and one that is often underexamined. Trusts in the highest sickness quartile spend 68% more per pupil on supply than those in the lowest. Some of that difference reflects context. But sickness patterns are also shaped by absence culture, return-to-work processes and leadership expectations.
Operational resilience and internal flexibility
Schools that have built meaningful internal cover capacity tend to be less exposed to day-rate agency cost. Timetabling decisions, workforce deployment, and how rigorously absence data is monitored at school and trust level each shape how much demand is met internally rather than through agencies.
Market conditions and procurement relationships
Daily and long-term agency rates, and local teacher labour market conditions, set the floor on what supply costs. But the balance between agency spend, direct engagement and internal cover is a choice, and one that many trusts have not reviewed recently.
How we work with multi-academy trusts
Our supply spend programme combines rigorous financial and operational data analysis with structured conversations with every headteacher and relevant central team member. This combination is deliberate. Financial data shows you the pattern of spend across your trust. Conversations with those responsible for day-to-day decisions provide the context needed to understand it. Without both, recommendations risk being technically sound but practically disconnected from how decisions actually get made in your schools.
The programme is structured in up to three phases, depending on your starting point and objectives.
Phase 1: Diagnostic
Structured interviews with every headteacher and relevant central team members, combined with deep financial and operational data analysis. Produces a focused diagnostic report, a trust-wide variation map, and a prioritised set of recommendations. Where appropriate, this includes a co-designed pilot plan for selected schools.
What this enables: Your senior team and board will have a clear, evidenced account of your supply position, sufficient to make informed decisions about where to focus, how to set budgets for 2026/27, and how to respond to the CCS framework change.
Phase 2: Pilot design and delivery
Targeted operational changes tested in selected schools, with defined metrics to measure what works in your specific context. Produces evidence of impact before any trust-wide commitment.
What this enables: You reduce the risk of scaling change before results are clear, and build an internal evidence base that makes the case for wider implementation.
Phase 3: Scale and embed
Change management and implementation support to turn successful pilots into sustainable trust-wide practice. Produces consistent operational routines, strengthened leadership capability, and oversight mechanisms that the trust can maintain independently.
What this enables: Improvement is maintained without ongoing external dependency. The trust owns the change.
Full Trust Review
This is the right model if you want comprehensive coverage and board-level confidence in your findings.
Every school is included, producing a variation map with the evidential strength needed for governance conversations.
Full coverage also reduces the risk of directing effort toward the wrong schools.
Trusts often find that the highest opportunities do not sit in the most obvious places.
Targeted Pilot Programme
This is the right model if you want to move quickly, or if a defined region, cluster or group of higher-spending schools is the right starting point.
All the analytical rigour of the full diagnostic, scoped to where opportunity appears greatest.
Findings are designed to inform trust-wide decision-making even where delivery is targeted.
Faster to mobilise and more contained in scope.
What the programme enables
The diagnostic brings together financial analysis and short leadership conversations to build a clear view of what’s driving spend, along with a small number of realistic, practical opportunities to strengthen your approach.
A clear picture you can act on
You will know where your supply spend is coming from and why, at school level as well as trust level. That includes your national percentile rank and your position within your peer cluster of contextually similar trusts, so the picture is benchmarked. You will be able to distinguish between spend that reflects genuine need and spend that reflects operational practice. And you will have a prioritised view of where the highest-leverage opportunities sit.
Board-level confidence
Your senior team and board receive a structured presentation of findings and recommendations, grounded in your data and informed by sector evidence. You will be able to answer a trustee's question about your supply spend with an explanation, not a headline figure.
A practical path from insight to change
Where appropriate, co-designed operational pilots in selected schools with defined metrics. A sequenced roadmap from diagnostic to sustained improvement, so the programme produces momentum rather than a report that sits on a shelf.
Download our free resource for trust leaders
Book a 30-minute exploratory call
Find out where your trust sits before June 2026
We already know where your trust sits. Using published DfE data covering every multi-academy trust in England, we can tell you your trust's national percentile rank and how you compare within your peer cluster. Most trust leaders find the number either confirms a concern or surfaces one they didn't know they had. That conversation takes 30 minutes.
If you would prefer to start independently, download our free resource: 10 questions every MAT leader should be able to answer about their supply spend before June 2026. Work through them with your leadership team. If they surface areas where further clarity would be valuable, we can support you in addressing them.
