Externally hired teachers for schools are almost twice as expensive

NOS News•today, 09:23•Amended today, 11:19

Secondary schools pay almost twice as much for an externally hired teacher as for an employed teacher. This is evident from an investigation by the Court of Audit. While a permanent teacher in a common wage scale costs 58 euros per hour, schools have to pay 113 euros per hour incl. VAT for a seconded teacher at the same level.

Although secondary schools have to pay much more, they are increasingly using self-employed teachers due to the teacher shortage. The external staff are mainly used to replace sick employees. Of the total expenditure by schools on staff, an average of 4.4 percent is spent on hiring external staff. That is double compared to ten years ago.

About half of the hired workers are teachers. The other half are support staff, such as IT staff.

The difference can mainly be explained by VAT and the margins charged by external agencies. The agencies charge 21 percent VAT, while schools cannot offset this because education is exempt from VAT. Furthermore, external agencies have a margin on hiring that varies from 15 to 46 percent.

The hired teacher generally does not earn much more than the employed teacher. Most of the costs go to the employment agencies.

A striking finding of the research is that schools hardly negotiate with external agencies about the price for a teacher. They accept the quoted price almost immediately because the schools consider using a teacher for the class to be more important than the costs.

Secondary schools spend an average of 95 euros per hour hiring a temporary worker or seconded teacher through an external agency. A teacher who commits himself to a school as a self-employed person costs an average of 77 euros per hour. The outliers therefore mainly arise when an employment agency stands between the school and the teacher, who charges VAT and margins.

The rates for an external teacher vary enormously. “It can vary from 25 euros per hour to 180 euros per hour,” says Barbara Joziasse of the Court of Audit. “The conditions also differ greatly. That gives schools a lot of room to negotiate, but they don’t seem to realize that.”

Teachers are increasingly opting for a self-employed career instead of becoming employed. They indicate that they need autonomy and variety between schools, but financial security is also mentioned as a reason.

The Ministry of Education, Culture and Science increasingly gives schools money in the form of subsidies. As a result, money comes in incidentally to the schools, making permanent contracts difficult to grant. External agencies can offer this security to self-employed teachers, because the demand for teachers remains high.

Outgoing Minister Paul for Primary and Secondary Education says in a response that a permanent teacher for the classroom should always be the starting point: “Temporarily hiring a teacher may be a necessary solution in the short term, but that should really be temporary and only if there really is no other way.”

Paul is working to reduce external hiring. She points out that she recently sent a plan to the House of Representatives to structurally fund structural tasks: “This helps education to hire teachers permanently.”