would allow such deployment. Such timetabling arrangements were significantly more apparent for respondents in secondary schools (40%) than in primary (8%).

Amount of Cover Provided by Teachers

Prior to the 2009 statutory contractual reforms, the STPCD provided for an upper limit of 38 hours each year in which a teacher or headteacher could be required to undertake cover for absence. Since 2004, schools have been required to secure downward pressure on the amount of cover for absence provided by teachers at the school and schools have been advised annually of the strategies available to them for managing cover, including the need to exhaust the range of options available for providing cover before asking teachers employed at the school to provide cover for absence.

However, despite the introduction of statutory provision for rarely cover in September 2009, a significant degree of variation of experience and practice was reported by respondents to the NASUWT survey, with some teachers reporting incidence of cover undertaken since 1 September at disturbingly high levels.

Over two thirds (68.6%) of the respondents reported that they had been required to provide some level of cover for absence during the first term of the new statutory requirements on rarely cover. One third of all respondents indicated they had been required to cover for absence once (17.1%) or twice (15.2%) during the first term. A quarter (24.1%) of respondents said they had been asked to cover three or four times between September and December 2009 and 1 in 20 respondents (5.4%) said they had been asked to cover for absence on a weekly basis.

Number of times teachers were asked to provide cover for absent colleagues during the Autumn 2009 term

Never 31.4%
Once 17.1%
Twice 15.2%
3-4 times 24.1%
Fortnightly 6.4%
Weekly 5.4%
Daily 0.3%

Teachers in secondary schools (69%) were more likely to indicate that they had been asked to provide some level of cover than teachers in primary schools (56%).

In terms of the amount of time teachers and headteachers said that they provided cover during the Autumn 2009 term, the survey found that the average (mean) number of hours spent providing cover was 3.66 hours. Despite the experience of primary school respondents, who undertook fewer periods of cover than their secondary school counterparts, the length of each cover episode was on average of a longer duration for the former than for the latter. The average number of hours of cover provided by primary teacher respondents was on average 5.96 hours during the Autumn 2009 term, compared to 3.26 hours for secondary teacher respondents and a very high rate of 6.70 hours for teachers in pupil referral units.

The duty on teachers to provide cover is based on a requirement that such provision should be rare and should only occur in circumstances that are not foreseeable. Despite this, around one third (31.9%) of respondents who had been asked to provide cover said that all of the events for which they had been asked to provide cover were foreseeable, whilst a further 26.4% of respondents said that they did not know the detail of the circumstances that triggered the need for cover.

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