About Staff Cover

Every school has to cope with staff absences, both scheduled and unplanned. The Staff Cover function is designed to reduce the administrative burden that organising cover places on academic staff.

Staff Cover integrates seamlessly with teachers’ timetables and utilises the same intuitive user interface. It has been designed around the school’s operational need to simply and swiftly allocate staff cover in an effective and fair manner.

The Staff Cover function allows allocation of lesson cover for academic staff who are absent, for whatever reason. Allocation of cover provision is firmly in the hands of the school. However, in the first instance staff cover is allocated to teaching staff that the system deems as being free and who teach the subject of the absent teacher. If a same subject teacher cannot be assigned within the system, then allocation will be allotted purely by availability. Furthermore, distribution of cover to teaching staff can be apportioned fairly over the course of a school day or week, etc.

The school decides upon, and sets up, the individual wording for each type of staff absence, in line with school protocol (e.g. sickness, holiday, training course, etc.) In addition, allocation of cover for absences can be set per lesson, day-by-day, for absent academic staff member(s). The allocated staff member(s) will be informed of their requirement to cover in their personal 3sysACADEMIC calendar, via pop-ups (when logging onto 3sysACADEMIC) and also via email. This ensures academic staff are informed immediately after Staff Cover has been allocated as to when and where they are required to provide cover. In addition, the room in which the lesson is set to be covered can also be changed; allowing further convenience for all concerned.

An additional feature of Staff Cover is that the absence information recorded can also be extrapolated using the reporting functions and used for statistical and analytical purposes, as and when it is required.