Last year, I left 20 years of employment in schools behind me to move towards a fully freelance model of working. Since October half-term, I have been doing general cover as an external supply teacher. This has allowed me the flexibility and capacity to grow my own work while keeping my hand in with teaching.
Since October, I have worked in variety of schools. With my school leader hat on, this has been a fascinating process, as I have gained huge insight into what schools in my locality are like. You can gauge quite quickly what is working, what is not, the culture, and the challenges each school and its staff are facing.
It has been intriguing to see different behaviour management strategies and systems in action, alternative timetables – I have taught in schools with 50, 60, 100 and 120-minute lessons and experienced split and single lunches of varying lengths – and schools with a vibrant staff community during break and lunch times and those where I struggled to find where staff meet at all.
As such, in this article for SecEd, I would like to focus on my experience of working as a supply teacher and share some of the best practices in order to help you consider how your school could improve the effectiveness of your temporary staff.
The first friendly face we meet
One thing that has been consistent is how welcoming almost every member of main reception staff is. This may seem small, but they are the first impression we have of a school and one of the few adults we meet in a school day. It makes a huge difference to be greeted and farewelled with a smile and some friendly chat, despite this often being the busiest part of their working day.
So many bits of paper
The information I get given can vary widely from school to school. As well as the general information, we can also accumulate worksheets, lesson resources, and seating plans. In addition, we often transport school laptops, chargers, plus our own bags, lunches and so on – it can get very cumbersome, especially if there are several room changes.
The best information pack I received was presented in a folder with plastic leaf pages – it looked professional and was much easier to flick through. The front pocket contained my cover sheet and timetable for the day. The rest of the pages contained the essential information that all supply staff need.
I have found the following information is particularly useful to have:
- Log-in details for laptops and relevant apps – at the front and easy to find please!
- Timings of the school day – highlighting the timings of breaks and lunches if they are not the same for everyone.
- A map of the school.
- Student photographs for each class (two copies if one is to be used as a register).
- Paper registers – and instructions on where to send them when completed.
- Step-by-step guides on where to find cover work and how to access the electronic register (as appropriate).
- Names and photographs of key staff, including the headteacher and senior leadership, heads of faculty, pastoral and/or behaviour leads, and safeguarding leads.
- Contact details for IT, safeguarding, behaviour support.
- Uniform guidance – to include specific school expectations on blazers, lanyards and equipment checks.
- Behaviour expectations, including whether we meet and greet before lessons, the routine for end of lessons/days, information about toilet rules, the use of time-out passes, and the mobile phone policy.
- An “at a glance” cribsheet for the behaviour system and language. It can help my effectiveness (and supports with whole-school consistency) if I am able to use the shared language of the school – am I giving a first verbal warning, a C1, or an S1, for not following instructions?
- Additional details, routines and scripts for behaviour management are useful, but please keep this separately for when we have time to read and digest this.
- Any other information that supports with your school improvement priorities and values can be useful – one school shared a document on “inclusive language” to use when referring to race, gender, sexuality, disability etc. Others shared details about their teaching and learning models which I was able to refer to and adopt during the day.
Staff toilets and staffrooms
If these are typically locked, are you able to provide supply staff with a key? It can be challenging (and a bit embarrassing) to find another member of staff (between lessons and during very brief lunch and break times) to let you into a toilet (who must then wait until you are finished to lock up).
Likewise, facilities, staffrooms and department offices vary widely from school to school. It is useful to be directed to where the best place to make a hot drink or to have lunch with other staff members is. It just makes for a more pleasant day and an increased sense of belonging – even if it’s just for a day!
Seating plans
Please, please, please – if it’s a planned absence, provide a printed seating plan. It can make such a difference when managing and monitoring behaviour and can help build relationships with students in a very limited time if I can address students by their name.
If seating plans are printed, I can greet students on the door, direct students to their normal seats (while visibly holding the seating plan for effect) then quickly circulate to check students have not “accidentally” sat in the wrong seat – less easy if it’s only available digitally.
A quick tip for readers who do emergency cover in their own schools – where seating plans have not been provided, I now quickly mock up a rough A4 plan of the room using a highlighter. If the class is settled, I ask students to raise their hands during the register and I write names in the appropriate place as I call them. Alternatively, with male-female symbols I jot down where students are sitting, then when I get a moment during the lesson I add the names. This allows me to record and monitor behaviour issues as they occur, even when I don’t have everyone’s name.
On-call systems
Behaviour can be challenging when doing supply work as some students and classes do not respond well to a change in their teacher or routine.
Occasionally, there is a need to remove a student from lessons to diffuse escalating behaviour and limit the distractions and disruptions to the other members of the class.
Ensure your procedures and systems for removing students from lessons or for how to gain additional support are clear in the information pack. Temporary staff don’t necessarily have access to email, walkie-talkies, or behaviour management apps to gain support when it is needed; some classrooms can also be quite isolated.
Some schools operate a system where “on-call” staff roam and drop-in to cover lessons as a priority. They are then able to support with difficult students or trouble-shoot technical or resource issues.
Some schools even provide a supervised “removal room” or timetabled classroom within each department to send students to in the event of any issue – please do share this information in your pack.
Make classrooms ‘cover friendly’
Ideally, cover lessons should have a minimum impact on the quality of students’ education. Teachers can minimise the time wasted trying to get a lesson set-up by clearly labelling book boxes and cupboards in their classrooms.
Having a clear stock of spare lined paper, glue sticks, spare pens, rulers and/or calculators is also useful. Get into the habit of leaving remote controls for electronic whiteboards in an obvious place at the end of your day.
Also, if there are switches in unusual locations, tricks for making the volume on videos work, or certain apps to connect your visualiser etc, please just leave a permanent (laminated) label on your desk.
Quality of cover work
The quality of cover work provided varies hugely – completely understandable for unplanned absence. However there are things that teachers and schools can do to improve the quality of cover work and to help improve the quality of teaching and learning for students.
Make sure the lesson is suitable for a non-specialist – don’t assume any subject knowledge. Ensure that learning intentions are clear and that any new knowledge that is to be taught is precise.
Provide short videos if possible to support with explanations – there are lots of free resources for this kind of thing, such as Corbettmaths, Cognito (science and maths videos via YouTube), Revision Monkey (key stage 3 science videos via YouTube) and freesciencelessons.co.uk (key stage 4 science videos).
It is helpful if you can include mark schemes for all quizzes, questions and worksheets – this saves the regular teacher a huge amount of time if students can self-assess their work during the cover lesson, and it also helps cover teachers to support during the lesson.
Providing accessible independent work for students to get on with also reduces reliance on teacher-led activities, which can be challenging if behaviour is poor, or the lesson length is long. This could be retrieval work from previous topics or deliberate practice for any new knowledge given in that lesson.
This is all much swifter to set if you have a bank of high-quality centralised resources. However, if this is not available then Oak National Academy has new videos, presentations and resources for most subjects. These are well structured and easy to deliver as a non-specialist. Most lessons have the option of watching the lesson via video or downloading the presentation and worksheet materials for the teacher to deliver “live”.
Greenshaw Learning Trust also has a variety of video lessons for different subjects free for use (see online).
Further good practice is to have three standalone generic cover lessons pre-prepared for each year group and subject in the event of emergency and unplanned cover.
Rather than staff having to set and upload work when they are feeling genuinely ill, or colleagues having to cobble together a lesson at the last minute – you can simply request “Year 10 History, Emergency Cover Lesson 1”, and just keep track at a department level, which class has completed which cover lesson.
- Helen Webb is an accredited executive coach based in Leicester. She supports and develops school leaders so they can avoid burn-out, drive school improvement and get the best out of their team and themselves. Helen has more than 20 years’ experience in education as a science teacher, lead practitioner, PGCE and ECT mentor, ECF Lead and ECT induction tutor. She is a regular in SecEd – find her previous contributions via www.sec-ed.co.uk/authors/helen-webb. Find out more about her coaching services at https://helenwebbcoaching.co.uk