Cover Supervisor interview

[French8312]

Hi, I have an interview next week as a 'Cover Manager' which seems to be a Cover Supervisor with some admin duties.
I will also be observed covering a lesson.
I'm currently a Learning Support Assistant and i'm also a qualified teacher, ive been in Education for 8 years now.
Does anyone have any advice about the interview or about the job itself ? I know it will vary from school to school.
I currently work in a low-achieving school with very challenging behaviour, and the interview will be in an outstanding school which is the top one in the area apparently.
I do like my school but i'm looking for something else. Any advice or experiences would be great, thanks.

Cover supervisor interviews will have the obligatory safeguarding question, probably a question about how you'd manage a difficult class or challenging behaviour, what you'd do in a situation where there's no cover work or terrible cover work (I had to cover a lesson as a teacher where the whole hour for bottom set languages was "to learn their vocab from this topic" ).

Something to be aware of is that students in outstanding schools in affluent areas can still be PITA for cover staff, they simply do it in a different way. Eg less swearing and outright defiance and more endless pretending they don't get the work,doing as little as possible and talking for the whole lesson whilst not doing any work. They can also have quite an arrogant attitude at times about "real teachers Vs supply" even if supply staff are qualified teachers. That's why I'd anticipate a behaviour question.

In terms of the job, it should be a case of picking up any number of classes a day in any subject and delivering preplanned and resourced lessons. Some schools will set proper work for cover and even have PowerPoint available for the cover supervisor, other schools seem to set any old crap and leave the cover staff to hope for the best.

Thanks a lot for the detailed and helpful reply :)
Yes I understand what you mean.. When I was a trainee in a fairly affluent school, a boy said to a female CS, "do you only do this job because you couldn't be a real teacher ? "
Honestly in terms of the 'if there was no cover work' question not 100% sure.
I'd either maybe try to find something else on the staff drive, have a 'back up lesson' prepared in case (though you cannot realistically do this for every single class),
Or id ask a pupil maybe to go next door to ask for some worksheets etc..
Maybe there are some better answers than this ? 😂