The Recruitment and Employment Confederation’s (REC) education sector group has commended the Department for Education and Skills’ (DfES) recent decision to advise schools to use recruitment agencies with the Quality Mark. 

However, it is concerned that out of approximately 120 local education authorities, only three or four hold the same quality mark.

In the recent document entitled ‘Safeguarding Children and Safer Recruitment’, the DfES advises schools to look out for the Quality Mark when using an agency to find staff to help them fulfil their responsibility to safeguard the children and young people in their care. 

The Quality Mark was launched in July 2002, as a joint initiative between the DfES and the REC to help drive up standards for everyone in the sector. It sets minimum standards for agencies and LEAs to reach in areas such as the way they recruit and interview supply teachers and the way they check and manage their performance.

John Dunn, chair of the REC’s education sector group, says: “The DfES’s recognition of the Quality Mark should encourage schools to take supply staff from a QM provider. It will give increased confidence to schools, parents and pupils that staff supplied through agencies are recruited properly and have ongoing support. For agencies, it will provide both assurance and official recognition that the highest standards of recruitment practice are being adhered to; and schools will be confident that they have selected an accredited and reputable service.”