Mr. Kieran Christie:

All schools have felt that substitution has been challenging, and particularly when there have been cases with Covid-19 and restricted movements. The parts are all interlinked here. Substitutes are, as we know, two a penny in certain subjects but in others they are nearly impossible to get. That has been the case in the lead up to this. We were in a bad place with regard to substitutes in the run-up to Covid-19 because many of our younger teachers, suffering from the consequences of unequal pay, were abroad or elsewhere. The reservoir was starting off from a very low point. Schools are definitely reporting to us that they are finding it an enormous problem to secure substitutes, and especially in subjects in the technology area and so on. That has always been the case but now it is spread right across the subject range.