How This North Adelaide School is Using ClassCover to Find and Book More TRTs

An army of one

In many ways, you could say Jacqui Keevers is the glue that holds Salisbury Primary School together. As the key administrator and face behind the desk, Jacqui is the first point of contact for students, parents, and visitors to the school. Since joining Salisbury as a classroom based SSO in 2004, Jacqui has got to know the ins and outs of the school and its community.

“Salisbury Primary School is widely known for study tours. Other schools from around South Australia come here to observe and learn how we teach, bringing teams of up to 30 staff to focus on things like Morphology, Phonology, and Reading.”

A typical day for Jacqui starts at 7:15am when she arrives at school, unlocking the gates and making sure everything is set up for the arrival of Salisbury’s 326 students and 42 staff. Once the day begins, Jacqui looks after everything from purchase orders and daily rolls to recording teacher leave and providing first aid to students, all while keeping an eye on the front desk and manning the phones.

Booking and managing the school’s TRTs sits on that list too. ClassCover simplifies the process and saves Jacqui time for other tasks, but she knows the importance of the human element when it comes to relief teachers. She makes sure she is on hand to greet TRTs and help get them set up for the day, particularly if they are new to the school.

The challenge: life before ClassCover

Like many schools in South Australia, Salisbury used the government-run TRT scheme to find and book relief teachers. While this method got the job done, Jacqui has noted some serious advantages of using ClassCover independent of a scheme.

“When we used the TRT Scheme, teachers would be able to call in as early as 5:30am if they were sick or needed to take the day off for another reason. From here, the TRT Scheme would organise a relief teacher for us. The problem was the lack of visibility. We often didn’t know which teacher we were getting until they walked in, sometimes right before the bell.”

How Salisbury uses ClassCover

From Jacqui’s perspective, one of the clear benefits since switching to ClassCover in 2018 is the added visibility when booking a TRT. 

“With ClassCover we know who we are getting long before they walk into the school. I also have the comfort of knowing that their paperwork is up to date. Things like email confirmations are also helpful for our records and making sure that we know exactly who is coming in.”

On the topic of paperwork, the ability to see at a glance whether a teacher has completed and uploaded all required documents makes it easy for schools to confirm qualifications before they book.

“I only add TRTs to my list if they have uploaded their ‘Authority to Teach’ which I print and store in a folder. We can’t risk having teachers without the proper credentials turn up to school, so this feature makes it easy to be sure.”

The results: visibility, paperwork sorted, and a system TRTs prefer

Since Term 1 2018, ClassCover has given Salisbury certainty about who is walking through the door and confidence that every TRT’s credentials are in order before the bell rings.

“I have always recommended ClassCover to other schools, both because of my experience using it and because TRTs I speak to prefer ClassCover to other booking platforms.”

Jacqui Keevers, Salisbury Primary School