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Cover
There is an annual contractual limit of 38 hours on the amount of cover that can be provided by an individual teacher employed under STRB conditions. This cannot be exceeded.
No weekly or termly limit within the 38 hours is specified within the contractual annual limit. However, headteachers should seek to ensure, as far as practicable, an even spread of cover throughout each term.
Headteachers need to ensure that cover for absent teachers is shared equitably among all teachers in the school (including headteachers), taking account of their teaching and other duties and the desirability of not using a teacher at the school until all other reasonable means of providing cover have been exhausted.
Cover for absence should no longer be seen as an effective use of teachers' time in school - in fact, the aim should be that teachers at a school should only rarely cover for absent colleagues.
Support staff
Headteachers need to ensure that any person working as a cover supervisor is appropriately trained, particularly in pupil behaviour management. All matters of concern and any training needs necessary in relation to the new role should be discussed with the headteacher before the cover is provided.
Joint guidance has been issued to LEAs and schools on the use of cover supervision. It says "cover supervision is only appropriate in the short-term where the teacher timetabled to take the class is absent, and pre-prepared work is available." (WAMG Note 13).
The guideance states that cover supervision should only be used for short absences that are known about in advance (such as a teacher's medical appointment or CPD training) or unepected (such as a day off due to illness). Longer absences - long-term sick or maternity leave - should be covered by a teacher.
It also says: "In a setting where a class is predominantly led by one teacher for the majority of the day, it is likely that cover supervision will very quickly become "specified work" and active teaching would be required. In any case, it would clearly be inappropriate in such settings for a class to be 'supervised' for more than three consecutive days.
"On the other hand, where pupils are only timetabled for occasional lessons which are affected by teacher absence, the use of cover supervision over a longer period of time may be appropriate." (WAMG Supplementary Guidance)
In addition to this, ATL's advice is that cover supervision should not be used for more than 5 days, and that any sickness absence longer than 5 days should be deemed "long-term", and covered accordingly. ACAS guidance defines long-term absence as a period of sickness which lasts longer than two calendar weeks, but given the criteria heads have to take into account when deciding on the use of cover supervision (see below), two weeks would in nearly all circumstances be far too long for a cover supervisor to fill in for a teacher.
Cover supervision
According to the guidance, support staff providing cover supervision should be:
supervising work that has been set in accordance with the school policy
managing the behaviour of pupils whilst they are undertaking the work to ensure a constructive environment
responding to any questions from pupils about process and procedures
dealing with any immediate problems or emergencies according to the school's policies and procedures
collecting any completed work after the lesson and returning it to the appropriate teacher
reporting back as appropriate using the school's agreed referral procedures on the behaviour of pupils during the class, and any issues arising from it.
Cover supervision should not be used to cover teachers' PPA time - this is a regular occurance that should be timetabled for, and is therefor neither 'short-term' nor 'short-notice'.
Pay and conditions
Support staff providing cover for teachers should ensure that they will be paid extra for this task. It is important to remember that the current pay levels of most support staff do not in any way reflect the responsibility of supervising a class.
"The NJC's (National) model job profiles reflect the expectation that staff providing cover supervision would have skills and knowledge at the level or equivalent to NVQ3 (i.e. Level 3 Job Profile). Where providing cover supervision is part of a support staff role, the job should be assessed and graded accordingly." (WAMG Guidance on HLTA Roles).
Schools should incorporate the duty into existing job descriptions (which would then be re-evaluated, resulting in an increase in pay). Schools must not pay an increased hourly rate only for the hours supervision takes place - the increase should be for all hours a member of support staff works in the school.
They should also review their individual cover policies to ensure that these activities are only undertaken by those members of staff with appropriate levels of skills, status and experience and that any necessary training is provided.
Schools will need to clarify the short-term cover issue as part of the creation of cover and PPA policies; and at LEA and local WAMG level, branches will need to ensure that associated policies and guidance are in place
Should support staff take a class unsupervised?
With the exceptions listed above, support staff should not be taking classes unsupervised unless doing so is part of their contractual duties.
If schools want to utilise support staff to cover, they must do so in a structured and organised way. There must be no obligation on existing support staff to take classes unsupervised if they do not wish to do so.
Cover resource pack
The National Remodelling Team (NRT) and Workforce Agreement Monitoring Group (WAMG) have produced a cover resource pack (via Training and Development Agency website), which contains a variety of resources and information.
Schools operate in different contexts and need to find their own sustainable solutions to implementing the contractual changes to suit their particular circumstances.
It includes:
a copy of the statutory guidance in Section 4 of the School Teachers' Pay and Conditions Document
a copy of Section 133 Regulations and Guidance issued under the Education Act 2002
a good practice overview, offering guidance on the implementation of chosen cover strategies
examples of three cover strategies, including case studies
a cover analysis tool, which allows schools to perform an audit of their cover provision.
A seperate WAMG guidance note, WAMG note 10, also provides advice on cover.
Need further advice?
Your first point of contact is your ATL rep in your school or college. Your local ATL branch is also available to help with queries, or you can contact ATL's member advisors on tel: 020 7930 6441 or email us. Please have your membership number to hand when telephoning and include it with any correspondence - this will help us to answer your query more quickly.
You may also wish to call: the out-of-office-hours helpline, tel: 020 7782 1612; our stress helpline, tel: 08705 234 828; our crisis helpline, tel: 08705 234 838, or our personal injury claims line, tel: 0800 083 7285.