Cover Supervisor role at boys’ school

[LoveBuzzz]

Due to personal circumstances, I am looking for a part time, term time role, so obviously looking at positions within local schools. A role as Cover Supervisor has come up at a local Outstanding all boys’ school. The job would involve covering lessons in cases of teacher absence. Has anyone any experience in this area? My husband is worried I’ll get lots of abuse from students as he remembers his cover teachers being constantly heckled (his school was in a deprived area, whereas this school is not…I appreciate this does not mean children will not misbehave!).

I don’t need to do this job for the money, I would be doing it because I want to return to work for my own sanity. Any thoughts greatly appreciated!

Does your husband often raise objections to your work prospects?

Due to personal circumstances,

I don’t need to do this job for the money

These are quite odd phrases to use without context! Going to work is quite normal … It sounds as if you’re having to persuade someone else of that?

(I’d imagine an Outstanding school might be a good place to work. But without knowing the specific school no one can tell you what the ethos and attitude of the staff and pupils will be.)

Have you got any experience or qualifications in education?

I'm guessing from your questions, you haven't worked in education before? Cover supervisor wouldn't be my first choice. You get thrown in the deep end with subjects and poorly set cover, and yes, the kids will play up more to you than their usual teacher - although less than for a cover teacher external to the school, imo.

I work in a secondary school.
Cover Supervisors typically get a harder time as they are not their regular teacher and so the kids try it on. In my school, Cover Supervisors are expected to teach the lesson as much as they can, not just supervise the kids. It's a tough job but if you're willing to put the hard work in and have a lot of resilience then go for it!

I think it depends on the school and the team. With you saying boys I'm assuming secondary? A family member does it at a mixed secondary and that school splits their cover supervisors into teams/subjects and have a bank of proper, meaningful work plus full time staff easily on call. So being part of that subject team, my relative quickly got to know the classes and topics and wasn't traipsing all over the school trying to know all the subject and dept routines. But that school had an ethos of respect and support for all staff. It's not easy but not awful.

Where I used to work, cover supervisors were treated poorly as were supply staff, but that was a combination of poor lesson plans/resources phones in by stressed out burned out staff, a useless dept head who did not help the cover staff whatsoever, an unclear behaviour policy, weak SLT and basically zero consequences for poor behaviour. At an outstanding secondary school I imagine it would be much better in terms of behaviour than otherwise.

In my current role at a primary I sometimes do cover and those lessons are lovely because the year group staff are supportive, set proper work and I already know all the children, they see a grown up and give respect without questioning my status. If it's a primary school I'd say definitely go for it!

I have been a cover supervisor. I was expected to teach every lesson so in my experience you needed to be fairly well educated (all round). Generally I would get blocks of cover if someone was long term sick. The only thing I wouldn't do was A level maths (and that would be a rare cover tbh)

With regard to the students you just need to set your boundaries. To begin with it can be tough (eg year 11 on a Friday afternoon) but they get to know you and it eases.

Being cover in a difficult secondary is much harder than cover in a grammar!

And I agree. Cover work is very dependent on the school and the staff. Planned sickness eg operation could be fantastic. Last minute science experiment not so much.

Thank you; this is exactly the feedback I needed to hear. I don’t have any teaching experience, but through various voluntary roles I am used to leading large groups of children in active and educational activities.

I’m incredibly grateful to you all for sharing your experiences.

@SurpriseSparDay yes, my husband is incredibly supportive; I believe his concerns came from a place of genuine worry. I wasn’t trying to be elusive with my post, just didn’t want to bore anyone with the details of my life. Quite simply, I am currently a SAHP and I’m at a point where I need to work for myself, but fortunately have a separate income stream that doesn’t necessitate this return.

I was a cover supervisor and I rather enjoyed it. Yes there were tough days with terrible cover (some departments were much better than others) and before the kids know you then they try and push boundaries, but after about the first 2/3 weeks of being firm but fair and very consistent then they begin to settle for you. I always worked on the 25/25/50 plan - 25% of the class will do every question and piece of work set and be absolute angels, 25% won’t even pick up a pen (but as long as they aren’t on phones or being disruptive I was content to ignore them sitting at the back chatting - or solving a rubix cube on one occasion) and 50% or the class would do enough work that hit the acceptable standard. This was a deprived comprehensive though, I imagine a grammar would be very different.
I would do the role again, it definitely did not put me off. Good luck on applying