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What time should I be prepared for a same day booking phone call? - 4myschoolsFor agencies there is no set time for us to call you; our office hours are 7am until 5.30pm but we run an out of hour’s service too.   On the whole, we try to book all of our teachers with 24 hours before the start of the booking – unfortunately the nature of supply work means you could well be booked at 8am for an 8.30am start, but we are realistic and know that this isn’t always possible.

We treat teachers as more than just ‘agency workers’, you are people too with families and commitments, so we try not to call before 7am or after 9pm. Outside of these hours we tend to send an offer via text or email, limiting the disturbance we cause. If you reply to an offer we may call to confirm if required.  If we call you on very short notice, we don’t expect you to arrive at the school within twenty minutes – it is always best to be realistic about the real arrival time and we can convey this to the school who are usually happy to wait with appropriate expectations set.

Our out of hour’s phone is often busy at the weekends, with schools calling mainly on a Sunday afternoon or early evening. The majority of our teachers prefer us calling them on a Sunday evening so they are prepared and can get on their way to the school nice and early on the Monday morning. If you do receive a message over the weekend, do call us back on the usual number, which will then divert to the person on call. Please be aware that the weekend isn’t a great time to talk about issues or future plans with the out of hours consultant – as much as we enjoy chatting, you may catch us doing our shopping or with the family.

There may be times during the day where you may miss a call from us, as you may be teaching or busy elsewhere – please return the call as soon as you can so we are kept up to date with your availability, so that even if the work has gone we can find you an alternative assignment and keep you as busy as you want to be.

As with most things, communication is the key to what we do. If you don’t like morning calls then simply let us know! If you are still in bed and it’s raining outside, and you really don’t want to drive into the countryside for a booking, either email us and keep us up to date or answer our call and just tell us you’re having a day to yourself, so we don’t bombard you with 3 or 4 more calls and we can all move on for the day.

Supply teaching offers great flexibility and key to that is know what is going on and that is a two way commitment the better we know your availability the better the service we can provide to you and the schools we serve.