STeER (RM6376) 2026: what supply agencies need to know before September

If you run an education supply agency, you have almost certainly heard the acronym STeER by now, usually attached to some version of "you need to be ready by September 2026." A lot of the commentary conflates it with a compliance standard, which it is not. This article sticks to what is actually confirmed: STeER is a DfE procurement framework with real fee caps, and a real mandate coming for academy trusts.

What STeER actually is

STeER, or Supply Teachers and Education Recruitment (framework agreement RM6376), is a DfE procurement framework negotiated with the Government Commercial Agency (formerly Crown Commercial Service), alongside ESPO, NEPO and YPO. It launched in May 2026. It caps what agencies can charge on top of worker pay: £45 a day for STEM teachers, £40 a day for non-STEM teachers, £36 a day for support staff (£38 for SEND), and £55 a day for senior roles.

From September 2026, the Academy Trust Handbook requires academy trusts to procure supply staff through RM6376, unless they have a compliant alternative under the Procurement Act 2023 at rates that do not exceed the framework's. That is a genuine, confirmed mandate, not speculation about a vague "framework coming into effect." If your agency supplies academy trusts, this changes the commercial terms you are working under whether or not you hold a place on the framework yourself.

Why the fee caps are the part that actually bites

A £40-a-day cap on a non-STEM teacher placement, or £36 for support staff, is not a small margin adjustment. It is a hard ceiling on what an agency can earn per day worked, regardless of what the underlying admin and compliance cost looks like. An agency carrying a manual back office, or a dedicated compliance hire on top of consultant headcount, is trying to absorb a fixed cost against a capped, per-day revenue line. That maths gets harder, not easier, the more trust business an agency does.

There is also a straightforward commercial angle. Schools and trusts are increasingly aware of RM6376 and what it means for pricing. An agency that can demonstrate a lean, low-overhead back office is in a stronger position to compete on the framework's terms than one still carrying the cost structure of a pre-STeER agency.

What we are not claiming

We are deliberately not telling you how to get your agency a place on RM6376, or what any application process or deadline looks like for suppliers. That route is still being worked through in the sector, and the confident-sounding guides claiming to know the exact process should be read with some scepticism. Check the GCA and DfE's own supplier guidance for that. What is confirmed, and what this guide sticks to, is the trust-side mandate and the fee caps.

How to audit your current compliance process now

Whatever your position on the framework itself, the underlying compliance obligations have not changed and are worth auditing on a fixed schedule rather than reactively:

• Pull your current Single Central Record and check every supply placement from the last three months is represented on it
• Check every DBS entry has a recorded check level, date, and certificate number, not just a tick box
• Confirm Right to Work documents are tracked to expiry, with re-checks scheduled before the 90-day share code window runs out
• Review whether you can produce a clean, exportable audit trail for any candidate on request, in minutes rather than hours
• Identify who at your agency owns compliance tracking day to day, and whether that depends on one person's memory or a documented process
• Work out what your cost-per-placement actually is once compliance admin is included, and check it against the fee caps for the roles you place

Running this audit by hand usually means a spreadsheet and an afternoon spent cross-checking records manually; a system like scout. already tracks SCR completeness, DBS renewals and Right to Work re-checks continuously, so the audit above is a five-minute export rather than a week of manual review.

A readiness checklist

If your agency is already doing all five of these consistently, you are in a materially better starting position than most of the sector for whatever the September mandate ends up meaning for your client base.

Building a habit of reviewing, not just reacting

The agencies most likely to find September 2026 stressful are the ones treating it as a single project to sort out once and then file away. A more resilient approach is a recurring review, monthly or quarterly, where SCR completeness, DBS tracking, Right to Work re-checks and cost-per-placement are checked against current practice, and any drift is corrected before it accumulates.

This also does not depend on predicting exactly how the sector settles around RM6376. A recurring review of the fundamentals, plus a clear-eyed view of your margins under the fee caps, is useful preparation regardless of how the framework evolves.

Where scout. fits in

Getting onto RM6376 is a procurement process, and the GCA supplier guidance is the place to follow it. What is in your hands now is readiness: scout. keeps your Compliance Officer's coverage (DBS, SCR, barred-list, Right to Work) inspection-ready at all times, on a fixed monthly fee instead of a compliance hire, so a capped mark-up doesn't turn into a loss-making placement. For the underlying detail on SCR management, see our guide on the Single Central Record for supply teachers, and for DBS specifics see our DBS checks guide. For the fee caps and a gated readiness checklist, see our STeER readiness page.