Guide
Covering teacher absences without wearing out the same five people.
Covering a teacher absence means deciding, before the first bell, who takes each class, duty and meeting the absent teacher leaves behind, and recording whose planning time paid for it. Every morning, someone turns a list of absent staff into that plan. This guide makes the decision sequence explicit, and shows where fairness and planning time leak.
Written by James Hooke, owner of Bell Path and a Victorian primary school teacher.
Updated 20 August 20269 min read
Key takeaways
- The cover decision has an order: an outside relief teacher first if one is available, then internal cover chosen by the fairness count, then splitting the class as a documented last resort.
- Internal cover almost always uses someone's planning time. Record what was taken and what is owed back, or the entitlement disappears.
- Fairness in cover is a term-long count, exactly like yard duty: who has absorbed how much, counted rather than remembered.
- The morning is finished when every affected person knows their changed day before the bell, from one place.
The 7:15am problem
Somewhere between 6:30 and 7:30 most mornings, someone in every primary school (a daily organiser, an assistant principal, sometimes the principal) turns a list of absent staff into a plan for the day. Who takes 4A? What happens to the absent specialist's sessions, and the planning time those sessions were releasing? Who inherits the recess duty? Which relief teacher is available, and do they have a day sheet?
In most schools this runs on one experienced person's memory of the whole school: who can do what, who is owed what, who was leaned on last week. It works until that person is the one who is absent. The aim of this guide is to make the sequence explicit enough that the system survives without its usual operator.
First decision: outside relief or internal cover
If a relief teacher (CRT in Victoria, casual in NSW, TRT in SA, supply in Queensland, relief in WA) is available and the budget allows, outside relief is almost always the cheapest option in real terms. Internal cover is never free: it is paid for with someone's planning time or someone's goodwill, and both run out.
The relief decision needs to happen early, because relief teachers are shared across every school in your area and the good ones are booked by 7:00. Whatever your booking channel (agency, direct list or booking app), the daily organiser needs the shortlist and contact details in front of them, not in a folder somewhere.
When relief does come, the quality of their day depends on the quality of their day sheet: the class timetable, the duty they have inherited, specialist sessions, room changes, and the wet-day arrangement if the sky looks serious.
Internal cover: spend planning time deliberately
When there is no relief teacher, the class still needs an adult, and that adult is usually a colleague who was scheduled for release. Be clear about what is being spent: an industrial entitlement. Taking Mrs K's planning time to cover 4A is sometimes necessary, but it is a debt, not a favour. Record what was taken, and what your agreement says happens next.
Choose who covers from the term-long fairness count, not from who is nearest the office. The same agreeable people absorbing cover week after week is the fastest way to turn your most cooperative staff into your most burnt-out ones.
The last resort: splitting the class
When there is no relief and no workable internal cover, the remaining move is splitting the class across other rooms, usually within the year level. It keeps students supervised at the cost of loading every receiving teacher and diluting the day's learning.
If you must split, split from a plan: pre-agreed groupings (which students go to which room, with what work), receiving teachers who know it is coming, and a record that it happened. Split days should count in the same fairness record, because receiving five extra students is cover too.
The knock-on effects: duties, specialists and release
An absence never removes just a class teacher. It removes their yard duty (reassign it explicitly), possibly their meeting attendance, and, if the absent person is a specialist, the planning time their sessions were releasing to classroom teachers. That last one is the most commonly missed. Three classroom teachers lose their release because the Music teacher is home with the flu, and unless someone is tracking delivery, nobody notices.
A good morning run walks through each knock-on deliberately: classes covered, duties reassigned, release re-provided or logged as owed, day sheets updated. Software tracks this better than memory, because every step is a lookup against the current timetable rather than a reconstruction of it.
Tell everyone from one place
The morning run is finished when every affected person (the covering teacher, the relief teacher, the teachers receiving split students, the person who inherited the oval at recess) knows their changed day, from one place, before the bell, not from corridor rumour at 8:52.
One published daily plan, a view for each person, and a staffroom display beat any number of individually composed 7:40am texts. The test is simple: could a staff member who checked one place at 8:15 know everything about their changed day? If the answer includes "and Kerry will tell them at the door", the system still depends on a person.
How Bell Path handles it
Bell Path's daily cover works from the live timetable. Mark staff absent and it shows every affected session, duty and released teacher, suggests covering staff ranked by the term's fairness count, tracks planning time taken and time in lieu owed, reassigns duties on the same screen, and produces the relief teacher's day sheet and the staff daily plan. The staffroom display shows the day's changes to everyone at once.
Common questions
- Who should decide cover each morning?
- One clearly named person with a written process, usually the daily organiser or an assistant principal, plus a trained backup. The most fragile cover systems are the excellent ones that live entirely in one person's head.
- Is it OK to use a teacher's planning time for cover?
- Agreements generally allow planning time to be used for cover in defined circumstances, but it creates a debt. The entitlement still has to be delivered, made up, or compensated under your agreement. Never take release time without recording it, and never let the same people's release be taken repeatedly because they complain the least.
- How do you keep cover fair across a term?
- Count it, in a per-person record of internal cover done, planning time given up, duties absorbed, and split-class loads received. Choose each morning's cover from the record, not from who happens to be photocopying nearby.
- What should a relief teacher's day sheet include?
- A day sheet should list the day's class timetable, the room and any room changes, inherited yard duties with zone and time, specialist sessions, the wet day arrangement, key student notes the school can share, and who to find for help. If it does not fit on one clear page, it will not be read at 8:45.
Bell Path plans daily cover from the timetable
See daily coverKeep reading
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To change a school timetable mid-year without rebuilding it, keep the published week as your baseline, change the underlying staffing fact rather than the cells, compare how much the new version moves, and publish one clearly current version. A staffing change does not have to mean a fresh timetable and another round of disruption.
The yard duty roster: covered every break, fair all term.
A yard duty roster puts a named staff member on every supervised zone for every break, every day, and spreads that load fairly across the term. This guide covers coverage, fairness counting, part-timer loading, and the wet day plan, the four things that decide whether your roster lasts the term.
Planning time in primary schools: APT, RFF, NCT, DOTT and NIT.
Planning time is the weekly release from face-to-face teaching that every Australian primary teacher is entitled to. Victoria calls it APT, New South Wales RFF, Queensland and the Northern Territory NCT, Western Australia and Tasmania DOTT, and South Australia NIT. The name changes, but the problem is the same everywhere: release time must be delivered to the minute, every week, and someone must teach the class while you do.
Daily cover software for schools
Mark a teacher absent and Bell Path shows every lesson and duty that needs covering and who is free to take it. Book the relief teacher and their brief goes to their phone by text, with the absent teacher’s class plan on it.
Staff portal for school timetables
In Bell Path's staff portal, each teacher signs in and sees their own published timetable, meetings and duties. They can raise a review item, claim time in lieu, or ask to swap a yard duty. Only the planner can change the timetable.