Hi all

I am getting a lot of questions from our academies re long term supply staff and pay should the schools close. The sourcing and appointment of supply staff is managed within our schools with no HR input, with previous efforts to be involved in some capacity snubbed until today, where I have now been tasked with trawling through all the various T&Cs (there's so many!!!!) to see if we are obligated to pay the agencies if schools do close etc to understand our position.

We have had a couple agencies state under AWR we should still pay them, however, only one agency has confirmed they are going to pay supply staff regardless 9I understand the contract with the worker is a separate thing).

All the agency T&Cs are stating the same thing - our charges will be based on the hours/days worked by the worker. Obviously if we're closed supply staff will not work.

Only one agency has stipulated in their T&Cs that we must pay should we close due to adverse weather (I'm guessing covering the more frequent snow days we've seen in recent years) but none have referenced infectious disease.

To clarify, school workers are to be paid should they be unable to work due to infectious disease under the national T&Cs (burgundy and green books), however, agency workers do not fall under these.

Internally, I'm being met with a lot of "I feel we should..", "the right thing to do..." from management, which I don't necessarily disagree with, but, I would like to know our obligations under AWR before we make any decisions.

Does anyone know the answer to this (is there one?!), or what are you all planning to do?

Thx

K