The Melbourne School Using ClassCover to Build a Trusted Relief Pool

School snapshot

• School: Montmorency South Primary School
• Location: Montmorency, VIC
• Established: 1972
• Students: 650
• Staff: 57
• Using ClassCover since: 2020

About the school

Montmorency South Primary School sits in Melbourne’s leafy north-east, and it feels much smaller than its suburban setting suggests. With around 650 students, “Monty South” is known for a genuine, small-town community feel, the kind of place where staff know the families and the kids behind them.

“It’s a real community,” says Jenny Hutchinson, who balances two roles at the school. “Despite being in the suburbs, you get that close-knit feeling. You know the families, you know the kids.”

Ask a parent to describe the school and Jenny believes they’d talk about an enriching, engaging environment where the teachers are “100% for the kids”: dedicated, hardworking, and focused on getting the best out of every student in a way that’s still fun.

Jenny wears two hats at Monty South. As Daily Organiser, a role she has held for more than two and a half years, she manages relief teacher bookings. As the school’s Digital Technology Specialist, she runs a full class load and acts as the school’s technology support. Mondays are her work-from-home day, dedicated to scheduling and confirming bookings. Tuesday to Friday, she’s at school teaching, with Daily Org tasks spread across early mornings and evenings wherever they fit.

“The hybrid approach lets me balance both without compromising either,” Jenny explains. Staying close to the teachers and students is exactly where she wants to be.

The challenge: keeping classrooms consistent

At a school like Monty South, continuity matters. For anxious students and those with additional needs, a familiar face at the classroom door makes a real difference to how settled and safe they feel through the day.

That makes the quality and consistency of relief teachers a genuine priority, and it’s why a stable, trusted pool matters so much. The challenge for any Daily Organiser is building that pool without spending hours chasing teachers one by one, texting and calling and waiting on replies that may never come.

It’s a balancing act Jenny knows well: leaning on trusted regulars who already know the school, while still giving new relief teachers a chance to get a foot in the door.

How Monty South uses ClassCover

Monty South has used ClassCover since 2020, and for Jenny the app has become the backbone of how relief gets booked. She works mostly from the mobile app, managing bookings wherever she is.

Her favourite part is the record keeping. Every absence and replacement is captured in one place, which she turns into a clean payroll report for the business manager, built straight from the app’s data. That accuracy keeps payroll on track and everyone accountable.

“Having a comprehensive record of every absence and replacement in one place saves so much time. I’m not texting and calling around — I can prepare everything the business manager needs straight from the app.”

Planning ahead is where the system really comes together. Jenny uses ClassCover’s pre-confirmed bookings to lock in regular relief teachers in advance, cross-checking them against her own diary before sending jobs out. She watches the app calendar for upcoming absences, confirms availability with teachers in person, then finalises everything through the app so there’s always a record. For sensitive classes, like Grade 6 in Term 4, she deliberately chooses known relief teachers to keep disruption to a minimum.

The results: stability for students, savings for the school

By building a strong internal relief pool through ClassCover, Monty South has largely avoided relying on external agencies, along with the costs and inconsistency that can come with them.

The payoff shows up in the classroom. A stable group of relief teachers who know the school and the students means fewer disruptions and more consistency, which matters most for the kids who depend on routine and familiar faces.

It also means Jenny can keep her communication in one place rather than juggling multiple messaging channels, a simplicity she’s quick to recommend to other schools.