It's 7:40 in the morning. Two teachers have called in sick, one is on exam duty, and the first period starts at 8:00. Somebody has to work out who covers what, write it on the board and tell everyone, before the bell.
In most schools that somebody is the same overworked coordinator, every single day. Here's how to make proxy periods less of a scramble.
Know Who Is Actually Free
The first question for every uncovered period is simple: which teachers have no class at that time?
On paper, that means scanning every teacher's timetable for that period. With 40 teachers and 8 periods, that's a lot of scanning at 7:40 am, and it's easy to pick someone who turns out to be in a lab with Class 9.
Keep a "free teachers by period" sheet for each day of the week. It only changes when the timetable changes, so you build it once and reuse it.
Decide Who Should Cover, Not Just Who Can
Being free isn't the only thing that matters. A good proxy choice also considers:
- Subject match. A Maths teacher covering a Maths class can actually teach, not just supervise.
- Knowing the class. A teacher who already teaches that section knows the students.
- How much cover they've done. The teacher who covered three periods yesterday shouldn't be first in line again today.
- Their own day. A teacher with six classes already shouldn't lose their only free period.
You won't get all four every time. But having an order of preference keeps the choice from being whoever walked past the staffroom first.
Keep It Fair Over the Term
Proxy duty is where resentment builds quietly. A few willing teachers end up covering far more than everyone else, and nobody notices until someone complains.
Keep a simple record: date, period, class, absent teacher, who covered, and why. At the end of each month, count proxies per teacher. If the numbers are lopsided, spread the next month's cover differently.
The record also helps when someone asks, "Who covered 8B on the 14th?" and nobody remembers.
Tell Everyone Before First Period
A proxy only works if the covering teacher knows about it. Writing the list on the staffroom board works, but only for teachers who check the board.
Send the day's list to staff as early as you can, and tell the covering teachers directly. If the absence is known the evening before, arrange the cover then.
Don't Rewrite the Timetable for One Day
A one-day absence doesn't need a new timetable. Keep the published timetable as it is and record the cover separately. That way the regular schedule stays clean, and next week nobody is confused about which version is real.
For longer absences, like a teacher on leave for a month, it's worth replacing the teacher in the timetable itself for those weeks instead of arranging daily proxies.
Proxies in TimeIt360
TimeIt360's Substitutions page is built for this morning routine. When you pick the absent teacher and period, it only offers teachers who are free at that time, ranked with the strongest match first, and it checks availability again when you save, so a substitute can never be double-booked. Each cover is saved as a record for the year, you can email the day's list to staff in one click, and teachers using the iPhone app get a push notification. The published timetable itself stays unchanged.
For a long absence, you can replace a teacher across all their periods, or only some of them, without regenerating the whole school. You can read more on the Substitutions help page, or see how it fits with the automatic timetable generator.
Need help? Use the chat assistant inside TimeIt360 or write to us at support@kvalabs.com.