By law only fully qualified teachers and assistants can take lessons in state schools, but academics identified instances when untrained staff – so-called "cover supervisors" – were taking their place for weeks at a time.
The report, by researchers at London Metropolitan University, found that untrained staff were being deployed in the toughest classes, with the lowest ability pupils, where it is often hardest to recruit full-time teachers. Former soldiers and security guards are also known to have been employed in schools.
Cover supervisors are allowed to oversee classes of pupils following instructions left by teachers but the government funded evaluation of teachers' working hours concluded that some were going beyond that. The report says: "While in theory the cover supervisors' role was to supervise, most reported that they sometimes did more than this."
Professor Merryn Hutchings, who led the research, said: "Cover supervisors were teaching – setting a task, giving advice and commenting on pupils' work."
"They are not trained or in any way qualified for that. The people we met had had careers working in the post office or being a driving instructor." She added: "It's fine to use them for short periods but when we find that some of them in secondary schools are taking the bottom set for weeks on end, I think that is distinctly worrying."
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