SLT contact when off sick

[plymouthmaid]

I was admitted to hospital with a serious illness on Saturday and emailed my head and his PA on Sunday informing them of the situation and telling them that I wouldn't be in school for the week.
My head responded telling me not to worry and that my health was the most important thing.
I remained in hospital until Wednesday afternoon.
I received an email, whilst in hospital,from my line manager informing me of a meeting we are to have next week.
The meeting is a timetabled one ( we have it fortnightly) and not of an urgent nature.
Can anyone tell me of the situation regarding contact of this sort being made when I was off work sick.

Stealth: at every school I've ever worked in there has been a member of senior staff on in charge of organising cover (amongst other things of course!) and it is done centrally for the whole school.

Teachers generally contact the cover manager when off sick, or one central number that the cover manager will access. That's because they will organise a cover supervisor/supply teacher/other member of staff to supervise the classes. It would be courteous if you can to also tell the line manager so they can sort out the work the class will do.

The managing of absence will either be done by direct line manager or a member of SLT, depending on the school.

So as AHT I didn't organise cover but I did all return to work interviews/ paperwork with staff in the departments I line managed.

Email a work address is fine.

Its yiu who is choosing ti check work emails when sick

Stealth
A member of SLT does the return to work ones unless it's something smaller and we've already told our HOD. (E.g. if someone has 4 days off with flu then the return to work is basically 'are you better?')
For anything that may require adjustments or anytging bigger then SLT do it.

The benefit of having cover centrally done is that the cover manager can see who is in, allocate cover supervisors and see if/how much bought in supply we need. That's much easier if they can pick up all messages from one point rather than get lots of HODs turning up sporadically.

I usually will drop HOD and email if I'm off with some cover or a note saying I'm unable to set cover but here's where some stuff is in my room. But we don't report absences to them in the first instance.

OK. Seems odd to me, I can see the need for centrally planned cover but I'd have thought it would be the other way round with the line manager managing and the cover person (business manager) just needing to know they're off sick and a rough idea of how long.

You call up daily for cover generally unless you've got medical advice to be off for a set amount of time.

Staff have to call in by a set time because the cover manager needs to ring the agencies and they need to get their supply staff across to school. So cover admin have it all in one place so that there's actually enough staff on site.

Setting actual cover work for absent colleagues ad a HOD / TLR holder is the straight forward bit.

Yep, my school all contact the same person, our deputy head because she organises the class cover if needed. As it happens, she is my 'line manager' in as much as she is responsible for monitoring my progress and helping me to ensure I meet my targets. We're primary though so don't know if secondary is different.

I send emails to people on their work email when they are off sick. They read them on their return to work. I certainly don't wait until they have returned to send emails about things I dealt with while they were off. Don't check your work email.

Cover (as in the person) has to be centrally managed. It would be chaos otherwise. Cover isn't just for illness. Also for trips, training etc. Staff across several departments could be out in one day. Cover supervisors are generally not part of department staff, and might well cover in Maths lesson 1, French lesson 2 etc. A HOD would have to coordinate with all other HODS, all before 7.30 ish, if if we're done that way.

It's worth remembering that in schools a head of department has anything from 0-6 people reporting to them (maybe a few more in science in a large school).

And the Job and Human Resources needs for their reports is exactly the same as the needs of the other departments.

It's not like a business where there might be 50-100 people in a large department and they have totally seperate jobs/needs/working patterns to all the other departments.

Many things in schools are handled more centrally than they might be in a business because there is a need for parity amongst lots of very small teams of people all doing the same job.

Good point.

That said isn't the line manager the person who the individual should have a relationship with? The one you'd want you to help work through the issues relating to your sickness? Delivering the work while supporting the staff - that's my role. How do I support staff if I just get notified they're not about and it's breaking confidentiality to tell me any more.

When I've had lovely line managers I have told them things quite openly.
When I've had line managers who create toxic working environments I've not.

I like having the option knowing that policy and procedure is being followed correctly at a central level. Schools are funny places

I agree with you on that SPB, and I think HoDs should be doing the back to work interviews for that reason. Even if it is just filling in the self certification form.