Covering Teachers' Absence

Audited Entities

• 23 schools across Wales
• Audit Scope and Objectives
• To determine whether learners, schools and the public purse are well served by arrangements to cover teacher absence.

Audit Criteria

• Not publicly available.

Main Audit Findings

• Arrangements for covering teachers’ absence in Wales are not sufficiently well managed to support learners’ progress or provide the best use of resources.
• Neither schools nor local authorities routinely monitor adequately the reasons for teachers’ absence, and therefore do not always understand the reasons why cover is required. Schools record the reasons for each teacher absence. But, few schools and local authorities aggregate and use this information to monitor the reasons for absence in ways that enable them to see the extent of absence for different causes and to inform actions that could be taken to reduce classroom absence.
• Cover arrangements are not managed well enough to ensure that learners make good progress and are safeguarded. Most schools do not have formal policies on cover arrangements in the event of teacher absence. None of the schools the auditors visited had a formal policy on cover that focused on reducing the impact of teacher absence on learners.
• Most schools have employed HLTAs and cover supervisors to meet workload agreement requirements, but they generally do not evaluate the effectiveness of the posts.
• Not all schools ensure that safeguarding procedures are in place for temporary staff. Where supply staff are recruited from a local authority pool or a recruitment agency, in most instances schools rely on the local authority or the agency concerned to carry out pre-employment checks. However, not all schools are aware of all the checks that should be carried out, and schools do not always keep records that checks have been completed before a supply teacher starts for work.
• The costs of supply cover can vary considerably, and schools and local authorities do little to monitor the cost effectiveness of their arrangements.

Selected Audit Recommendations

• To support its work to raise standards and attainment, the Welsh Government should takes greater account of the impact of cover in its policies and strategies including setting out clearly in grant and other guidance that it expects schools, local authorities and regional consortia to seek to minimize the need for covered lessons.
• The Welsh Government and local authorities should encourage schools to develop policies on managing cover that focus on ensuring that learners’ progress is maintained and resources are used effectively.
• The Welsh Government should identify or develop model policies on managing cover, and disseminate these to schools as good practice guidance.
• Local authorities should collect and analyse absence-related data for all the schools in their area, and disseminate information that would enable its schools to compare absence levels with those of other schools in the local authority or within their family of schools.
• The Welsh Government, regional school improvement consortia and local authorities should agree guidance for schools on the procurement of supply teachers. This guidance should set out the different arrangements available or otherwise possible, including the two framework contracts for supply teachers, the legal and human resources implications of different arrangements, and the potential for collaboration to result in better value for money.

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