Supply Teaching: The Most Dangerous Job In the World

And why you should never do it.

This is an extract from my upcoming book, (Un)educated: My Life As A Teacher And Why You Should Never Become One. It releases on May 28th, but it’s available for preorder now.

I made the decision to ease myself into primary school teaching by registering as a supply teacher. My thinking was that I could get to experience a variety of schools and classes, see what age group I would most like to teach and then decide if it was ultimately for me.

I soon discovered that the transition from secondary school was not going to be easy. Particularly in light of my great idea of trying it out as a supply teacher. I had briefl y worked as a supply teacher in secondary schools before starting the job in Hertfordshire, so you would have thought I’d have known a bit better what I was about to get myself into.

But no. Surely being parachuted in to take a class of under-elevens would be much easier than being thrown to a pack of contemptuous teenagers who’d had more years to develop the craft of eviscerating an unknown adult who turned up to attempt to control them (realistically) or teach them (ideally), I thought.

Reader, it was not.

No one has ever learnt anything from a supply teacher. No one has ever been inspired by a supply teacher. No one has ever respected a supply teacher. The moment you walk into a school as a supply teacher, you are automatically at the bottom of the pecking order. Every single person in the school, from the offi ce staff to the cleaners, is more important than you. This isn’t just my opinion – the fact that you are utterly unimportant is made abundantly clear from the moment your day starts.

Being ‘supply’, as it’s known in teaching, means that you hop from short-term placement to short-term placement. Some of these last for a morning and some of them are cover for a maternity leave. It really depends on the needs of the individual school. The worse the school, the more they have to spend on supply cover as fewer teachers would want to work there. And they also have more absences because of teachers going off with sickness and stress.

All you had to do to become a supply teacher was join a supply-teaching agency. The registration wouldn’t take more than half an hour. You provided them with your qualification, had a short interview where you had to demonstrate that you weren’t clinically insane and BOOM! You were a supply teacher! You were now at the bottom of the educational food chain and ready to work. A supply teacher’s day normally starts with being woken up at around 6 a.m. by an Australian from a teaching agency telling you that you’re needed to cover someone in a terrible part of London crippled by gang warfare. You know that going there is a terrible idea, that not a single positive thing can come from leaving your bed and the entire day will most likely be a long, hard, bastard struggle till the clock hits 3.30 p.m. However, you also know you need to eat, so the choice is not a particularly difficult one to make.

So you throw your clothes on, brush your teeth and then hightail it to whatever part of the city you’re needed. At this point, you know nothing about the school, the classes or – in the case of secondary school – even the subjects you’re meant to be teaching. Every day is a complete surprise and most of the time the surprises are not pleasant.

Your first task is to find the school itself. The building will tell you a lot about what kind of school it is. If it has high walls topped with barbed wire surrounding it, then it’s important to understand that those walls exist to keep the kids in the school. If a school looks like a prison, it’s because the pupils behave like inmates. When you arrive, you must next fi nd the reception. The grim-faced receptionist will sullenly give you the onceover before demanding your ID so they can check you’re not a paedophile who’s trying to gain access to the kids. I personally think that making paedophiles work as a supply teacher would be a fantastic way of healing their sickness. Nothing will put you off kids quicker than being psychologically tortured by a group of sociopathic teenagers hell-bent on tearing you apart for their own personal enjoyment. I’m sure this would be the most powerful type of aversion therapy known to man. A far more eff ective deterrent than prison, in my own opinion. After a day in a south London comprehensive, most supply teachers leave with a bitter sense of regret, clothes soaked in stress sweat and severe PTSD, vowing never to return.

The receptionist will then hand you a lanyard with the word ‘SUPPLY’ written across it in big bold lettering. This is the equivalent of having a sign saying ‘KICK ME’ stuck on your back. It immediately makes you a target as the kids know there will be zero consequences for their atrocious behaviour. They have complete free rein to do whatever they want for the hour that you are trapped with them. This will likely involve something highly unpleasant happening to you.

Tormenting supply teachers has been the sport of choice for teenagers since the dawn of time. From the moment the teaching profession was invented, there was some poor individual who was roped into being a substitute teacher and no doubt ended up suff ering some kind of horrendous fate at the bottom of a well. Every single person should be a supply teacher at least once in their life, just to understand what a little bastard they were when they were younger.

I was no different, and my career as a supply teacher was probably karma for all the times I behaved like an odious little oik in lessons. Whether it was signing paper registers as ‘Boris Yeltsin’ or deliberately tampering with other students’ science experiments, I was never an exemplary student. My only priority in secondary school was to take the piss as much as possible. I’m sure my own teachers thought I was a dickhead. Because I was.

Having passed through the portal of the school offi ce, you then have to fi nd your way to the classroom and pray that the lesson you have to deliver is something you have expertise in. In my short stint as a secondary school supply teacher, I was registered with the agencies as a drama specialist who could also teach English. And yet I could turn up and be handed a lesson plan that showed me I was expected to deliver a physics lesson. In those moments I always felt like a car mechanic who had been shoved into an operating theatre and was expected to perform neurosurgery. It’s very diffi cult to teach physics or perform neurosurgery when you have a C in GCSE science. You’re a glorified babysitter at this point and everyone knows it. Including the kids. Especially the kids…



This is only the opening gambit of one chapter. For more, place your pre-order now.