It’s been a long time coming and now it’s here. There are plenty of supply teachers who have their preferred schools they like to work with regularly. These are normally schools within a sensible range of the supply teachers’ home and the teacher is familiar with.
In the past this simple arrangement where the school calls the teacher and books them didn’t work very well because the availability of the teacher wasn’t known, and the school then had to ring the next person on the list and so on.
As frustration of not being able to reach the contacts grew, typically the busy cover manager or primary head teacher would call an education recruitment agency to ask them to do the ringing around to find the best available teacher.
A seemingly simple process frustrated by not knowing who is available leading to the preferred teacher not getting the assignment and the school not getting their preferred teacher.
The good news is those days are gone.
There are mobile apps available like updatedge specifically designed for temporary workers, schools, hirers and agencies to share the latest availability and offers.
Giving supply teachers the best opportunity to find the most work at their preferred schools and for schools to have the best opportunity of always getting their preferred teachers reducing disruption at the school.
This means supply teachers and schools now have control – they know who is available and can send offers which once accepted are passed to their mutual agency requesting a formal assignment confirmation. An important aspect of any process to ensure all the obligatory safeguarding checks are complete and current.
It is now super easy for a supply teacher to download the updatedge mobile app on to their smart phone, to enter the email addresses of their schools and agency contacts; once that is done the supply teacher can update their latest schedule and share it to all contacts with just three clicks.
Schools benefit massively; they are able connect with any supply teachers or any part time workers such as cover supervisors, retired teachers, catering or cleaning teams. Once the Cover Manager has invited a few contacts to connect, those contacts live availability is instantly shown via the portal. Knowing who is available first thing in the morning enable instant offers to be sent to any or all of the schools’ contacts.
This is far quicker for the school than picking up the phone or emailing to their agencies to describe what they want. The instant offers on the portal takes less time than it does to dial a single agencies number.
The trick with this for the school is to invite as many of the preferred supply teachers as you can building a large network of contacts that know the school and will apply for offers sent. The bigger the schools’ network the higher the probability that the cover can be found.
For supply teachers it’s the same, the larger your network of preferred agencies and schools that you are connected to via the updatedge mobile app, the more people will know you are available and can send offers.
For supply teachers, as the experienced ones know, keeping your recruitment consultants and schools informed of your availability is essential to being offered opportunities. It’s the same with the updatedge network, sharing your availability regularly with all your contacts confirms you are available giving more confidence to your schools that you can do that work on that day.
Supply teachers and schools are doing it for themselves. Teachers are getting more work from their preferred schools by simply sharing their live availability on the updatedge mobile app. Schools are more often getting their preferred teachers and are requesting assignment confirmations from the mutual agencies taking control rather than waiting to be told which supply teacher will turn up..
It’s a different way of doing it and much better for everybody removing uncertainty delay admin and frustration…
To try the free service: If you are a supply teacher or temporary worker please go to the App Store or Google play and download updatedge. For schools find the portal via your browser on your desktop as school or your smart phone at: portal.updatedgepro.wpenginepowered.com