A question about Supply Teachers

[Linnet]

How exactly does the Supply Teachers situation work? Does it work differently between areas?

Is it a case of lets say you're a supply teacher and on a list to say your available for work. A school needs a teacher to cover someone off sick. Does the school just phone up the supply teacher and say we need you to cover today can you come in? or is a lot more complicated than that?

Different situations apply to different areas, Linnet. Most supply teachers are registered with an agency who send them out when the school contacts them; what tends to happen then is that the supply teacher forms links with a particular school and the school will then contact them direct as this saves the school money in agency fees. Some places still do have a central list and schools just phone round individual teachers till they get someone who is available. Think the agency route is more common now though, due to concerns about child protection etc.

It depends on the area. You can also get longer term supply work that covers things like planned sick leave (for operations etc) and maternity cover. In the school I work in the same supply teachers get called in time after time. Some are now on permanent cover as cover supervisors- we have two in the school which has made a huge difference in the amount of cover work we are asked to do.

As others sya - depends where you are and, in some LEAs, whether you are primary or secondary.

Here in Sheffield we have both an LEA agency and private agencies, and you can deal with schools direct as well.

You will need to go through the police checks, etc. regardless.

Message withdrawn

IN North Wales there are no supply agencies. You contact the local LEA's to have the police checks done and all the other stuff. Fill in the application form, references etc and then you're on their list. If a school needs someone they can contact the LEA who will then send them the list and the school contacts them direct. Or you can contact the schools once you're on the LEA list and get work like that.
Primaries are different in that there is A Pool of teachers- this is interviewed for every year and if you don't get on the pool you don't even get considered for permanent work or supply. Once you've been accepted though you don't have to keep reapplying but it is a bit of a 'status symbol' amongst student teachers towards the end of the course- the haves and the have nots (on or off the pool)

So it's not a case of Teacher phones in sick and the school phones someone up to come in pronto?

I thought that was maybe a bit to good to be true.

The only reason I ask is that dd's teacher is off again this week. She's always off sick and they have had a lot of different teachers, sometimes one teacher in the morning and another in the afternoon.

Anyway, teacher is off again this week, she was off all of last week as well but dd hadn't mentioned this to me, it's a Primary 3 class all 6/7 year olds. On Monday dd came out of school and said that she and two other children had been put into a P7 class as the teacher was off and the whole class had all been split up into different classrooms where there was room for them. I thought nothing of this until a friend who's child is in my dd's class told me that her dd had spent the entire day sitting in the corridor outside a classroom! apparently my dd's class had been taken round the school and put into classes where there were spare seats but my friends dd and two boys were put to a class where there were no spare seats so the teacher put them outside in the corridor and shut the door on them. They were sat outside in the corridor all day.

Obviously my friend is not happy about this. She's going to be talking to the headmistress about it and I know another mum who was having a meeting with the headmistress yesterday.

Hence the reason why we wondered if they couldn't have got a supply teacher to come in at very short notice. But we weren't sure of how the supply teacher situation works which is why I asked.

The school has to cover illness for the first three days. If the teacher is going to be off on day 4 she should let the school know and they arrange supply cover. All illness is covered internally for the first three days but then the unions insist that we don't cover absent colleagues after 3 days

Most small Primary schools don't have anyone to do 'internal' cover if a teacher is ill. Some Heads will teach, some primaries have a non-teaching deputy, but most will call in a supply on the first day of illness. Classes being split through out the school happens for two reasons. The first is that the school couldn't find a supply. This happens a lot in London (or it did when I was teaching there a few years ago), but it has also happens v occasionally as a last resort at my current small rural school. Secretary rings round our list of teachers we know and like who do supply (informal arrangement with known teachers), but everyone is busy, then she phones the one agency covering our area for an unknown emergency teacher and the agency can't find anyone. Head is out for the day at a conference that can't be cancelled, noone else is available so the class is spilt as a very last resort.As a Reception teacher I would have 3 or 4 older children with me, who acted as helpers for the day. They loved it and it did them no harm. Other children would join the work going on in the class they joined with the teacher tweaking it to better fit their ability. The second reason is the more likely one - money. At my old school our supply budget (running April to April) would usually be nearly empty by the Spring, and then emergency tactics took over. The first two days of illness were covered by the class being split, then if teacher was away from a 3rd day supply was organised.All class teachers had to keep a 'spilt class' file in the office, showing lists of which children go to which class and with 2 days photocopied work (horrid worksheet stuff just to keep children busy). The teachers all hated this and hated splitting classes (although we successfully argued that in shouldn't happen to YR and Y1, too young to cope), but sometimes the budget meant it had to happen. It's not ideal in anyway. Maybe the school was desperate. It's certainly worth asking if anything will be set up in future, like the 'splitclass' files, so that if it happens again at least they know where they are going and they will have something to get on with. Also ask if there are any regular supply teachers that could get to know the class, and always be used if the teacher continues to be away a lot.

thanks for that info Pixiefish and Bee3. There are usualy a couple of teachers who cover classes when the usual teacher is off sick. I guess they weren't available that day to cover the class. Usually they are very good at getting a teacher in it was just such a sad situation for my friends dd to be stuck in a corridor all day that we wondered about the supply teacher situation.

I agree that money probably does come into it somewhere along the line, sad but true that is always seems to come down to money. there is a teacher off sick from another class further up the school due to an accident in the summer holidays and she hasn't started work yet as she's still off, was supposed to start after the October holidays. Maybe their supply budget has been spent on replacing that teacher. I will find out more on Monday when I see my friend again.

thanks