A school duty rota policy you can edit

A duty rota policy is how the school behaves when the usual person is not there to explain the colour code. It is short on purpose. Governors do not need a philosophy of supervision. They need to know who may be moved, what is protected, and where the record is. Copy the sections below into your own document and delete what you do not mean. This is a working draft, not legal advice and not a substitute for the STPCD or your local agreements.

Why bother

Without a policy, cover is whoever picks up the phone. The same staff get used, a gate is left, and an intervention disappears with no note. A written order makes the next person consistent. It also gives you something to point at when the allocation feels personal. The morning itself is how to plan school cover. The posts are the duty rota.

What to include

• Who owns the rota, and who deputises
• The order of cover for duties and for lessons
• What you will not strip: first aid on the yard, a named 1:1, PPA
• How often you are willing to use one person
• When you book supply instead
• What time the list is published, and what replaces an earlier copy
• What is recorded when a session does not run
• How often leaders look at the pattern

Draft text

Use this as paragraphs in a staff handbook or a one-page policy. Replace the brackets.

Purpose

This policy sets out how [school name] staffs break, lunch and the gate, and how it covers absence. The aim is a named adult on each post, a single published list, and a record of what changed.

Who decides

The rota owner is [role]. If they are absent, [role] decides. Staff do not swap duties between themselves and leave the published list wrong.

Order of cover

For duties, use people already assigned to that kind of work, then other support staff who are free and allowed. For lessons, use people employed to provide cover where the work has been set, then other support staff if the policy for that lesson allows supervision rather than teaching. Teachers are asked only rarely, and not where the absence was known in advance. PPA is not used. Leadership is last.

What stays put

Do not leave the yard, the gate or a sitting without the number of adults agreed in the risk assessment. Do not remove the named first-aider unless another first-aider is on that post. Do not cancel a protected intervention ([list them]) in order to fill a duty, unless [role] agrees and the missed session is recorded.

The morning

Absences are logged before cover is arranged. The list is published by [time], with one version in inboxes and on the staffroom wall. A later change replaces that version the same way. Draft lists are not circulated.

Supply

Supply is booked by [role] when internal cover cannot meet the rules above, when the absence is longer than [number] days, or when the lesson needs a teacher. The agency list is held by the office.

Records

The school keeps who was published, what changed, and which planned sessions did not run. That record is staff time, not a pupil register. [Role] reviews it [weekly]. A short note goes to [SLT role] when the week shows a pattern: the same people, repeated supply, or repeated missed sessions.

Putting it into use

Agree it with the people who will live with it, including midday supervisors, not only SLT. Tell staff once, in plain language, where the live list will be. Review it when the school day changes, not only when someone complains. If the policy says PPA is protected and Thursday's sheet uses PPA anyway, the sheet is what staff will believe.

You can run these rules on cover management so the suggestion follows the order and the publish is the record. The policy is still yours. Software will not decide that a particular adult should stay with a particular child. A 30-day trial is enough to see whether the PDF matches the policy you just wrote.

After you adopt it

Tell people where the live list is, and what to do if they think it is wrong. A policy that staff cannot find will not change a corridor conversation. Review the brackets you filled in after the first half term: the cutoff time, the list of protected sessions, the person who may book supply. If those were guesses, fix them. Do not add pages. A policy that grows every time someone is annoyed becomes a document nobody rereads.

Keep the duty rota and the cover order in the same place. Schools that write a beautiful cover policy and leave the playground sheet in a different file get two answers on a wet Tuesday. One document, or one board that follows the document. How to create a school duty rota is the build. This page is the rule the build has to obey. When the two disagree, change the sheet the same day. A policy you update in July and a rota you update every morning will never match, and staff will follow the rota.

Date the policy. An undated page in a handbook is how last year's cutoff survives a new school day. When bells move, the morning section moves with them. Leave the order of cover alone unless the staff mix has changed. People can learn one order. They will not learn a new one every half term. If you change the order, tell the people who get asked first, not only the leadership meeting. Put the date under the title so a printed copy can be thrown away when it is old. Keep one signed copy in the office. That signed copy is the one staff can rely on.

Related

• How to create a school duty rota
• Playground duty rota: templates for primaries
• MAT cover: running it across several schools

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