But Mr Mydat says his recruitment firm has seen a disturbing number of cases where schools signal that they would prefer not to have ethnic minority supply teachers.
He says the request might use a phrase such as "We want a 'John Smith', if you know what I mean."
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He says it might suggest schools are concerned about how classes in schools with few ethnic minority pupils would react to a black or Asian supply teacher.
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The Nasuwt union last year published a survey of teachers' experiences of supply work. It found that ethnic minority teachers had more difficulty in finding work than the average for all teachers.
They were also less likely to feel welcome in the staff room. There were 14% of ethnic minority supply staff who said they were "rarely made to feel welcome" in schools, compared with 8% for all staff.
They were also disproportionately likely to be underpaid, in relation to their previous experience.
The owner of another supply teachers' agency said schools might have legitimate concerns about English language skills - and that this might be misinterpreted as racism.
But the managing director of another teacher recruitment agency operating in several different parts of England, who did not want to be identified, said that the issues of race and ethnicity could be confused with English language skills.
"Language is the issue, not race," he said.
He said schools could be "quite blunt" about what they wanted from supply agencies - and that could include not wanting someone who did not speak good English.
"The schools will say: 'I need someone the kids are going to be able to understand. If they can't understand him, the kids are going to play up and we're going to have hassle.' They're quite frank about telling you."
And such schools might check with an agency if a teacher's name suggested they might not speak English as a first language, he said.
"If it's a foreign-sounding name they might ring back and ask what's his English like?" says the owner of a recruitment firm, who was once a teacher himself.
My daughter had a trainee teacher for Maths. She is in the top set for GCSE and is doing double Maths. The teacher was Indian and had a very strong accent. The class struggled to understand her and consequently fell behind with the curriculum. We met her at parents' evening and it really was hard to understand her - it was not just a case of teenagers over reacting. Another friend had a Greek Physics teacher and had the same problem. It's hard enough to teach teenagers - but if they're struggling to understand what the teacher is saying it just makes life that much harder.
Wendy, UK
Is it racist to ask that someone not capable of doing the job is not sent?
odinn pisze:SAM napisales ze twojego matematyka nie można było zrozumieć.
odinn pisze:
Szkola chce kogos z HIGH ENGLISH. To wszystko. Jeżeli ktoś nie spelnia tego warunku, niech potem nie jeczy - "RASISCI".
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