Key Information Documents for Supply Teachers

What a Key Information Document actually is

Most supply teachers meet the phrase “Key Information Document” for the first time in an onboarding email, buried among a DBS reminder, a right-to-work upload request and a fifteen-page contract of engagement. It looks like paperwork. It is easy to scroll past. That is unfortunate, because it is the one document in the entire onboarding pack that exists solely for your benefit and that is legally required to tell you, in actual pounds and pence, what you will be paid after everything has been taken out.

A Key Information Document — everybody in the industry shortens it to KID — is a short standalone document that an employment business must give to a work-seeker before agreeing terms. An employment business is the legal name for what you would call a recruitment agency: a business that supplies workers to work under the control of a third party, which is precisely what a supply agency does when it sends you to a school. The requirement lives in regulation 13A of the Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses Regulations 2003 (SI 2003/3319), which was inserted into those regulations by the Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses (Amendment) Regulations 2019 (SI 2019/725) and came into force on 6 April 2020.

The reason it matters more for supply teaching than for many other kinds of agency work is the length of the chain. In a simple temp arrangement the agency pays you directly and the only gap between the rate and your payslip is ordinary PAYE. In agency supply teaching there is usually an umbrella company in the middle, which becomes your legal employer, and a whole layer of employment costs and fees gets funded out of the rate before your gross pay is even calculated. The KID is the only pre-contract document that has to show you that layer.

Where the rule came from

Regulation 13A did not appear from nowhere. It is one of the more concrete outputs of the Matthew Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices, the independent review commissioned by Government and published in 2017, which looked at how employment law was coping with agency work, platform work and other arrangements where the person you work for, the person who pays you and the person who employs you are three different entities.

One of the review’s recurring themes was not that agency workers lacked rights in the abstract, but that they could not see the deal they were agreeing to. A worker told a headline day rate on the telephone had no reliable way of knowing, before starting, how much of that rate would survive the journey through an intermediary’s payroll. The Government’s response, delivered through a package of 2019 regulations, included both the abolition of the Swedish derogation and the creation of the Key Information Document. Both came into force on 6 April 2020. The KID was the transparency half of that package: an attempt to force the deduction waterfall onto a single readable page, before the point of commitment rather than after it.

Understanding that origin helps you read the regulation properly. Regulation 13A is a disclosure obligation, not a pay regulation. It does not tell an agency what to pay you, does not cap an umbrella’s margin and does not ban any particular deduction. It only requires that the numbers be shown to you before you agree to them. That is a real limit on what the document can do for you, and it is worth holding in mind throughout — but disclosure obligations are not nothing, because most of the detriment supply teachers suffer in this area comes from not having seen the arithmetic in advance.

When you must be given one

The timing rule is short and strict. The employment business must give you the KID before obtaining your agreement to the terms that will apply between you. Not on your first day. Not with your first payslip. Not when you ask for it. Before the terms are agreed.

In practice, for a supply teacher, that means it must arrive before any of the following happen:

• you sign or electronically accept the agency’s terms of engagement or contract for services;
• you click through an onboarding portal accepting terms of business;
• you verbally accept an offer of terms over the telephone, if that is when the agency treats terms as agreed;
• you are entered onto the agency’s payroll or its umbrella’s payroll;
• you work your first day.

The logic is that the document is meant to inform a decision you have not yet made. Its entire function is to let you compare one agency against another, or one payment route against another, on the basis of the net figure rather than the advertised day rate. A KID issued after you have already agreed terms is, at best, a receipt. It may still be useful evidence, and you should keep it, but it has not done the job regulation 13A set it.

Whose job it is, and why agencies get this wrong

This is the point on which more supply teachers are fobbed off than any other, so it is worth stating without qualification. The duty to issue a Key Information Document belongs to the employment business — the agency — and to nobody else. The gov.uk guidance on responsibilities for employment businesses working with umbrella companies puts it as plainly as guidance ever puts anything: it is always the employment business’s responsibility to issue Key Information Documents, and it cannot defer this to a third party like an umbrella company.

The reason agencies get it wrong is not usually malice; it is that the umbrella holds most of the numbers. The margin is the umbrella’s, the payroll calculation is the umbrella’s, the holiday pay policy is the umbrella’s. So the path of least resistance is for the agency to say “your umbrella will send you an illustration” and consider the matter closed. It is not closed. The regulation places the duty on the party that is obtaining your agreement to terms, which is the agency, precisely so that you have a single accountable counterparty rather than being passed down a chain.

The practical consequence for you is that an umbrella’s own pay illustration, however detailed, does not discharge the agency’s obligation. Umbrella illustrations are often genuinely good documents and you should read them — the companion guide on reading an umbrella KID line by line works through one in full — but if that is all you were sent, the agency is in breach.

What it must look like

Regulation 13A imposes format rules as well as content rules, and they do real work. A compliant Key Information Document must be:

• A separate document from any other document given to you. It cannot be a section, a schedule or an appendix inside the contract of engagement or the terms of business.
• No more than two sides of A4 when printed. This is a hard cap, and it is the rule that stops the disclosure being diluted into unreadability.
• Written in a clear and succinct manner — plain language, not a restatement of the regulation.
• Set in an easily readable font size, which rules out the six-point grey text that some onboarding packs favour.
• Headed “Key Information Document” at the top, so that it is identifiable as what it is at a glance.

If you are unsure whether what you were sent counts, apply the two-sides test first. It is the quickest diagnostic there is. A great many documents that agencies describe as KIDs are in fact eight-page onboarding summaries or twelve-page contracts, and a document that long is not a Key Information Document no matter what the covering email calls it.

What it must contain, item by item

Regulation 13A(3) sets out the required contents. Below is the full list, with what each item means specifically for a supply teacher rather than for agency workers generally.

A statement of the document’s purpose, and where related information can be found

A short explanatory opening saying what the document is for and pointing you to where fuller information sits — normally the contract of engagement and the umbrella’s own terms. This is the least interesting requirement but it has a use: it should tell you which other documents exist, which is how you find out that there is an umbrella contract you have not yet been sent.

Contact details for the officer to whom breaches can be reported

The KID must tell you where to report breaches of the Employment Agencies Act 1973. Historically that was the Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate. Since 7 April 2026 the relevant body is the Fair Work Agency, established under Part 5 of the Employment Rights Act 2025, which absorbed the EAS Inspectorate along with the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority and the Office of the Director of Labour Market Enforcement. A KID that still names the EAS Inspectorate is not necessarily evidence of bad faith — a great deal of template documentation has not caught up — but it does tell you when the template was last reviewed, which is a useful signal in itself.

The type of contract you will be engaged under

Whether you are being engaged under a contract of service (an employment contract), a contract of apprenticeship, or a contract for services. For agency supply teaching paid through an umbrella this is normally a contract of service with the umbrella company, which is a genuinely consequential fact and not a technicality: it is why employer National Insurance is funded out of your assignment rate, and it is why your statutory employment rights run against the umbrella rather than the agency or the school.

The identity of the employment business — and separately, who will actually pay you

These are two distinct required items, and the separation is the point. The KID must name the agency, and it must separately identify who will actually be paying you. Where an umbrella company is in the chain, this is where that umbrella must be named. If the document you were sent names the agency and then refers vaguely to “our approved payroll partner” without naming it, that is not compliance, and it matters practically — you cannot check a company’s Companies House record, its accreditation, or its appearance on HMRC’s published list of named tax avoidance schemes if you do not know what it is called.

The rate of remuneration, or the minimum rate reasonably expected

A figure. Where the exact rate is not yet fixed — common in day-to-day supply, where the rate can vary by school and by phase — the regulation allows the minimum rate reasonably expected instead. That flexibility is legitimate, but it is not a licence to say nothing. “Rates vary” is not a minimum rate reasonably expected. A range with a floor, or a stated minimum day rate, is.

How often you will be paid

Your pay interval — weekly is the norm in supply teaching, though some umbrellas run monthly cycles. This interacts directly with the umbrella margin, because a margin charged per pay period costs you more per day worked in a week where you only picked up two days than in a full five-day week. It also interacts with PAYE: weekly payrolls apply weekly thresholds, which is why a light week can look disproportionately well-taxed and a heavy week disproportionately badly taxed until the year reconciles.

Any costs, deductions and fees charged to you

Everything that reduces the money reaching you, listed. For an umbrella arrangement that means the umbrella margin, and any other charge the umbrella levies — same-day payment fees, for example, if any exist. It also means statutory deductions. The important discipline here is completeness: a deduction that never appeared in the KID but does appear on your payslip is one of the clearest red flags there is, and it is the single most useful thing this document gives you, because it converts a vague suspicion into a documented discrepancy.

Any non-monetary benefits

Anything offered that is not cash — training access, a rewards scheme, insurance cover. In supply teaching these are usually thin, but if an agency is using a benefits package as part of its pitch to you, it belongs in the document rather than only in the recruitment email.

Your annual holiday entitlement, and how holiday pay is dealt with

Both halves matter, and the second half is where the disputes are. The entitlement figure is normally the statutory 5.6 weeks. The treatment is the live question: is holiday pay being rolled up and paid with each payment at a stated percentage, or accrued and held back to be paid when you take leave? The KID must say. If it says holiday pay is accrued and retained, the document has just told you there is a pot with your name on it, which is exactly the evidence you need if that pot is never paid out — see is your umbrella company withholding your holiday pay and the wider explanation of rolled-up holiday pay for what the 2024 reforms actually permit.

The representative example statement

This is the heart of the document, and the reason a KID is worth more to a supply teacher than to almost any other kind of agency worker.

Regulation 13A(3) requires the KID to include a representative example statement which sets out, as amounts, reasonably estimated where necessary and item by item, the gross remuneration, each deduction, cost and fee, and the resulting net remuneration, for a single pay period. Read that phrasing carefully, because every clause of it is doing work:

• As amounts. Pounds and pence, not percentages and not descriptions. “Employer National Insurance will be deducted at the prevailing rate” is a description. “Employer National Insurance: £101.76” is an amount.
• Reasonably estimated where necessary. The regulation accepts that the agency cannot know your tax code, your student loan plan or whether you will opt out of the pension. It requires a reasonable estimate rather than accuracy. That is a real concession and it means you should not treat the net figure as a promise — but “reasonably estimated” is still a standard, and a figure produced by leaving out entire deductions is not a reasonable estimate.
• Item by item. Each deduction separately identified. A single line reading “total deductions” fails this, because the entire purpose is to let you see which costs are statutory employment costs and which are the intermediary’s own fee.
• Resulting net remuneration. An actual bottom-line figure. This is the number you can hold against your bank statement later.
• For a single pay period. One week, or one month, matching your actual pay interval — not an annualised projection, which would hide how a flat per-period margin behaves in a short week.

The umbrella-specific requirement

Where an intermediary or umbrella company is involved, gov.uk’s guidance for employment businesses goes further than the bare list. The KID must explain how the umbrella arrangement affects pay, and it must make plain the difference between the rate the employment business is paid for the placement and what you actually receive.

That requirement is aimed squarely at the confusion that defines agency supply teaching. A consultant says “we can do £180 a day.” You hear a day rate. What has actually been described is an assignment rate that must fund an umbrella margin, employer National Insurance at 15% on everything above a £5,000 annual secondary threshold, the Apprenticeship Levy at 0.5%, and your holiday pay, before your gross pay as the umbrella’s employee even exists — and only then do your own National Insurance, income tax, pension and student loan come off. The KID is the document that is legally required to show you that gap in advance.

More than one payment route means more than one page

Many supply agencies do not offer a single way of being paid. A typical offer is: our own PAYE payroll, or one of these three umbrella companies from our approved panel, your choice. Those routes produce materially different net figures for the same assignment rate, because margins differ, holiday pay handling differs, and agency PAYE removes the umbrella’s employer-cost layer entirely.

Where an employment business offers more than one payment route, gov.uk expects a separate key facts page for each route. That is the whole point: the document exists to enable a comparison, and a comparison needs more than one set of figures. A single generic KID that describes the panel in the abstract, without per-provider numbers, leaves you choosing an umbrella on the basis of which name you were told first.

If you are given a choice of umbrella and only one page — or no pages — ask for the rest in writing. The request is short and it is the agency’s duty to satisfy it. It is also the cheapest money a supply teacher can make: the spread between the best and worst provider on a panel over a full academic year is not trivial, and it is entirely invisible unless somebody puts the two example statements side by side.

When a new KID has to be issued

The obligation is not a one-off at onboarding. A new Key Information Document must be issued if the information in it materially changes. For a supply teacher, the realistic triggers are:

• The agency moves you to a different umbrella company, or the umbrella you are with is acquired or rebranded. The identity of who actually pays you is a required item, so a change to it is material by definition.
• The umbrella margin changes. This directly changes every figure below it in the representative example statement.
• Holiday pay treatment changes — for example a switch from rolled-up payment to accrual, or the reverse. This is one of the most common unannounced changes and one of the most consequential.
• Your rate moves materially, or the basis on which it is set changes.
• Your pay interval changes, for example from weekly to monthly.
• A new cost, deduction or fee is introduced that was not in the original document.

This matters more than it sounds, because it converts a historic failure into a present one. If you started two years ago, were given a KID then, and have since been moved to a different umbrella without a new document, the agency is in breach now — which is a much more comfortable position to write from than complaining about paperwork from 2024.

If you were never given one

Plenty of supply teachers reading this will realise they never received anything resembling a Key Information Document, or received something that fails the two-sides test. Here is what that is worth, honestly.

What the breach is

Failing to issue a compliant KID before obtaining your agreement to terms is a breach of regulation 13A of the Conduct Regulations, which sit under the Employment Agencies Act 1973. The Conduct Regulations are enforced by the state rather than by individual claims: they are the regime that governs how agencies must behave towards work-seekers, covering things like not charging you fees for finding work, not withholding pay because the hirer has not paid the agency, and — since April 2020 — issuing this document.

Who enforces it now

Since 7 April 2026, enforcement sits with the Fair Work Agency, established under Part 5 of the Employment Rights Act 2025. The FWA absorbed the Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate, which previously policed the Conduct Regulations, along with the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority and the Office of the Director of Labour Market Enforcement, into a single intelligence-led enforcement body. It also carries new powers to enforce holiday pay and statutory sick pay, which is a genuinely significant change for supply teachers: holiday pay had never previously had any state enforcement body standing behind it at all. The Employment Rights Act 2025 additionally amends the definition of “employment business” in the 1973 Act so that it catches what umbrella companies do, bringing umbrellas within FWA regulation, with a fuller separate umbrella regulatory regime expected in 2027. The agency is running 2026/27 as a transitional year under a published delivery plan.

The honest limitation

That second use is the one worth understanding properly. Where supply teachers do recover money, it is normally through an unlawful deduction from wages claim about a specific shortfall — unpaid accrued holiday pay, a margin charged at a level never disclosed, a deduction that simply appeared. In that dispute, the question of what you were told before you agreed terms is central. If a compliant KID exists and shows the deduction, that helps the employer. If no KID was ever issued, the employer is arguing you consented to something that was never put in front of you, in circumstances where the law required it to be. That is not a claim in itself, but it is a materially better position to argue from.

How to report it

Check your own KID against this list

Open whatever your agency sent you and work down this list. Every item is a requirement of regulation 13A or of the gov.uk guidance for employment businesses working with umbrella companies, so a “no” anywhere is a specific, nameable shortcoming you can put in an email rather than a general feeling that the paperwork was poor.

• It is headed “Key Information Document” and is a separate document, not a section of a longer contract.
• It is two sides of A4 or fewer and set in a font you can comfortably read.
• It arrived before you agreed terms — check the date on the email against the date you signed or accepted.
• It came from the agency, not only from the umbrella company.
• It names the employment business and, separately, names the company that will actually pay you.
• It states the type of contract — contract of service, apprenticeship or contract for services.
• It gives a rate of remuneration, or a minimum rate reasonably expected — a real figure, not “rates vary”.
• It states how often you will be paid.
• It lists every cost, deduction and fee charged to you, including the umbrella margin as a stated amount.
• It states your annual holiday entitlement and explains how holiday pay is handled — rolled up or accrued.
• It includes a representative example statement for a single pay period, showing amounts item by item from gross down to a stated net figure.
• It explains the difference between what the agency is paid for the placement and what you receive.
• It gives contact details for reporting breaches of the Employment Agencies Act 1973.
• If you were offered more than one payment route, you received a separate page for each.
• It has been reissued since any material change to your umbrella, margin, rate, pay interval or holiday pay treatment.

What the document cannot do

It is worth closing on the limits, because a Key Information Document is frequently described as a protection when it is really a disclosure. Regulation 13A does not set your pay. It does not cap what an umbrella company may charge you as a margin. It does not require the agency to offer you a payment route you like, and it does not make an arrangement lawful merely because it was disclosed. An umbrella charging an aggressive percentage margin, or operating a pay structure that splits your money into a small taxed element and a large untaxed one, does not become acceptable because it was written on a two-page document you received in advance.

What the KID does is remove your excuse for not knowing, and remove the agency’s excuse for not telling you. That is genuinely worth having. A supply teacher who reads the representative example statement before accepting a booking, compares it against the equivalent page for a second umbrella on the same panel, and then checks their first payslip against the figures they were given, is in a completely different position from one who accepted a day rate over the telephone and started worrying three months later. The document is the cheapest leverage in agency supply teaching, and most people never ask for it.

For the wider picture of how agency supply differs from direct employment — who employs you, why the Teachers’ Pension Scheme usually does not apply, and what the Agency Workers Regulations add after twelve weeks — start with supply teacher pay explained. For the arithmetic inside the representative example statement, go to the line-by-line walkthrough.