Can anyone tell me how this works and who does what?
We are a small educational establishment, located in Europe but teaching entirely in English. The country we are in does not, as a rule, have its teachers cover any classes, except for very long-term absences. IT's very normal for students to go days, even weeks without a subject teacher. We've traditionally had a more proactive approach to this - not least because our parents are modest fee-payers, but also becuase our current Head does not iike our younger students especially being dumped. So we have asked our teachers to cover classes whenever possible, and gone to great lengths in terms of shuffling timetables / class assignments around to make this happen.
For various reasons cover has become a real hot topic among staff. Certain practices have been in place for a long time (absent teacher decides what happens to the class AND provides lessons for them - this can be a huge task if they are away for a week, say, on a trip). We have Heads of Department but they traditionally do not get involved in organising cover. We don't have any specific 'cover lessons' i.e; handy 1 sequence easy lessons that can be taken off the shelf and given to a covering teacher. Teachers could come up with these, but we've never asked them too.
Although we are international, we tend towards the British model as this was where all of our Heads have come from (though as usual in an international setting they are a fairly motley crew with interesting work histories). The whole justification for going to such great lengths to cover absent teachers often rests on 'this is the way it is done in the UK'. Our current Head plus some experienced UK teachers have told us that in their experience:: cover is obligatory and and teachers can be informed of it just by a note in their pigeonhole; that curriculums and lesson plans are made available to the covering teacher, so it's easy for them to pick up the lesson; that in the absence of prepared lessons, the Head of Department / Subject is responsible for providing an off-the-shelf easy lesson that any teacher can deliver, and that it's the Heads of Department that should be responsible for organising cover.
Is that vaguely correct? How does cover work in your UK secondary school? Who organises it, who does it, who provides the work for the lesson?