With a large student body and a culture that’s more family than school, ClassCover helps St Peter’s Catholic Primary access a large pool of casual teachers and ensure they are the right fit for the community.
For Kristy Tanner, the Principal’s Assistant at St Peter’s Catholic Primary School in Caboolture, north of Brisbane, a typical workday can start as early as 5 am when messages from sick teachers start rolling in. With 650 students and over 70 staff including teachers, learning support, and admin staff, barely a day goes by that Kristy doesn’t use the ClassCover app to organise a casual teacher — usually while she eats breakfast and gets ready for the day.
As part of Brisbane Catholic Education, St Peter’s is one of the dioceses’ 145 schools across Southeast Queensland that use ClassCover to find, book, and manage relief teachers and other casual staff. Describing the culture within the school, Kristy likens it to a family, with some staff working at the school for over 30 years.
“One of our admin staff I believe started here in 1974. Some of our teachers are even teaching the children and grandchildren of their former students. I think that speaks to what a good place this is to be if people are here that long.”
With such an impressive legacy to uphold, ClassCover has proven to be a valuable tool not only to help the school find casual teachers, but features like the ClassCover jobs board help ensure they find teachers that are the right fit for the school community.
“I recently posted an ad for the first time on the ClassCover jobs board and found that was a really good way to find new teachers. The extra vetting that this allows us to do means we can be sure we’re finding teachers that are a good fit for the school.
“We’ve had teachers we found on ClassCover go on to be offered longer contracts and even apply for full-time teaching positions at the school. It really helps us develop relationships and ‘try before we buy’ to get a feel for how suitable they are before we offer them something longer term.”
At the same time, with such a big school community, there are days when it’s more important to have access to a large pool of teachers. A recent teacher planning day, for example, saw Kristy book fourteen casual teachers for the one day.
“Days like that do happen where we need to book a large number of relief teachers at once. That’s where ClassCover really helps with tools like the broadcast feature that allows us to send out a bulk message to several or all of the teachers on our list to make sure that we can get those classes covered.”
Asked what advice she would give to other schools considering trying ClassCover, Kristy spoke of the benefits the platform brings to both schools and teachers.
“Absolutely try it! It’s a great way to save time, connect with staff, and find new relief teachers. It’s also a better system for the teachers because rather than having to rely on their calendars and write each new job down themselves, ClassCover keeps track of all their bookings so they can easily check them right from their phone. I haven’t had anyone forget to turn up while using ClassCover.”
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