Cover in your school
The national agreement also envisaged an enhanced role for support staff.
Most strategies will include the deployment of support staff to provide cover. This also reflects the clear indication in the national agreement of the enhanced role that support staff will play in our schools in the future.
Section 4 of the School teachers' pay and conditions document (on Teachernet) makes it clear that headteachers should not use a teacher at their school to provide cover until all other reasonable means of providing cover have been exhausted.
Not only the 38 hour limit
When deciding on a new cover policy schools must consider the following questions:
- How and when does the need for cover arrive?
- How can the need for cover be minimised?
- How will a cover strategy affect the continuity of learning for your pupils?
- What are the implications for your school's support staff?
- How cost effective is a strategy?
- How easily can a new strategy be implemented in your school?
Cover strategies
New cover strategies can be divided into two groups:
- strategies which provide cover supervision, and
- strategies which allow for the delivery of 'specified work'.
Cover supervision may take place under one of the following strategies:
- supervision provided by support staff with a wider school role
- supervision provided by support staff who are wholly or mainly contracted to provide cover, and
- in a learning centre where a class is moved when the timetabled teacher is absent.
While specified work is not delivered in these strategies, appropriate planning and preparation - the creation of a lesson bank or the imaginative use of ICT- means that pupils can follow appropriate self-directed tasks. The pupils are supervised by known and trusted staff and disruption to their learning can be minimised.
Specified work (as defined by section 133 Regulations and Guidelines issued under the Education Act, 2002, available on the Office of Public Sector Information website) may be delivered under the following strategies:
- employing a teacher wholly or mainly to provide cover
- support staff working to the standard of an HLTA provide cover, and
- external teacher cover - sourced through an LEA supply service, private agency or private lists.
These strategies allow for the possibility of delivering specified work. However, if they are deployed for short term, unplanned absence - and if the cover staff have not been involved in the lesson planning - they may become supervision strategies.
Other strategies which schools have sometimes used in the past are:
- doubling classes, and
- splitting classes.
Neither of these strategies is in line with the aims of the national agreement. They can disrupt the continuity of learning for more than one class and have a negative effect on standards.
