This is the first article in a two part series on relief teachers. In this series, Craig D’cruz, National Education Consultant at CompliSpace, explores the legal obligations of schools regarding the induction programs used for relief teachers. In Part One of this series, Craig will be examining how some schools currently tackle this issue and why their approaches may not be sufficient.
Schools engage relief teachers (also known as casual, substitute or supply teachers) in a casual capacity nearly every week of the academic year. This is because, unlike in many other businesses, a school simply cannot have a class without a teacher. They are usually employed to replace teachers on unplanned personal leave or to replace teachers absent on camps, tours and excursions, professional development or sporting events.
Relief teachers are engaged because it is not always possible to have other teachers within the school take up the extra sessions for the missing employee. This can be for a variety of reasons including but not exclusive to:
Although most non-government schools have their own unique policy in relation to relief teachers, there are a few commonalities regarding the sometimes ad-hoc daily employment of relief teachers:
An internet search for school-based policies relating to the induction of casual or relief teachers in schools finds few examples of induction processes for relief teachers. Many non-government schools have well documented and excellent staff induction programs but it seems that not as many include casual relief staff in this process.
Some State education departments have developed excellent policies and procedures on this topic. For example, the New South Wales Department of Education (NSW DET) has created a number of pages on its website, devoted solely to relief/casual teachers and the expectations that the NSW DET has of them. Clearly, any relief teachers are expected to have read and understood their obligations before they are employed to work in any NSW government school.
Headings used in their induction policy include:
The Department of Education and Training Queensland offers a similar set of expectations.
Anecdotal evidence provided to the author has revealed that it is rare for non-government schools to have a formal induction process for their contracted relief teaching staff.
There may be other schools that provide relief teachers with a form of formal induction, however the anecdotal evidence indicates that, in many other schools, one of two things occurs. Firstly, on a relief teacher’s first day at a school, there may be a hurried 5-10 minute conversation at the commencement of the day as they are walked to their first class. Secondly, more regular relief teachers (who are engaged several times in a term or semester) may be expected to learn by a process of ‘osmosis’ over several weeks or months, where they develop an understanding of the school ethos and the other highly important issues such as codes of conduct, OHS/WHS and so forth. However, not all schools consider this level of induction to be an integral component of relief teacher employment.
Schools need to be aware of the high risks associated with the employment of relief teachers who, although they may have valid State/Territory registration and a WWCC, know little to nothing about the school or the expectations the school has of them. There seems to be an underlying assumption made between both parties that the relief teacher knows how to behave and how to manage and care for children (simply by being a teacher), whilst delivering content in a subject area that may be totally foreign to them. In order to ensure that relief teachers meet the expectations of the school, there must be a structured method to deliver this information to them.
In part two, we will discuss the need for an organised and thorough induction process and strategies that can be used by schools to reduce the risk of ad-hoc employment practices.