Substitute teacher coverage

Turn an approved staff leave into confirmed period cover, see what is still uncovered, and understand why some periods generate no arrangement.

Teaching & schedule guide for day and boarding schools.

Last updated August 29, 2026

Cover in Schoolyi is derived, not typed in twice. Approving a staff leave and naming a substitute expands the leave into one arrangement per published timetable slot the absent teacher held, for every working day inside the leave dates. Each arrangement is keyed on the date plus the timetable entry, so approving the same leave again updates the existing rows instead of duplicating them.

Two things therefore have to be true before cover can exist: the timetable must be published, and the calendar must know which days are working days. A draft grid produces no cover at all, and an unsynced holiday produces cover for a day the school is closed.

The coverage loop

The teacher applies for leave at /leave with dates and a leave type
An approver - Admin, Principal, or Vice Principal - approves and selects a substitute teacher
Confirmed arrangements are created for each published period on each working day in range
The substitute opens /timetable and reads the My substitutes tab
Coordinators run the coverage report for the week to find periods still uncovered

Who sees what

Role	Visibility
Platform Admin, Principal, Vice Principal, Admin	Every arrangement, plus the coverage report and analytics
Teacher	Only arrangements where they are the absent teacher or the substitute
Student and parent	Nothing; the published class timetable does not show cover swaps

Handoff

Cover is the visible half of a leave record; the other half is the entitlement balance, deducted for the same working days on the HR side. The two are created together at approval, which is why cancelling a leave has to cancel both. For period-level attendance, the covering teacher is the person the marking rules recognise for that slot, so an accurate arrangement is also what keeps the period register attributable.

Limits

One substitute is chosen for the whole leave. Splitting cover across several teachers means editing arrangements period by period
There is no automatic suggestion of a free teacher on approval; the free-teacher view under Timetable tools is a manual lookup
Cover does not change who may mark daily attendance. Homeroom attendance stays with the class and co-class teacher

Common questions

Quick answers in plain language.

I approved leave with a substitute but no cover rows appeared. What went wrong?+

Cover is generated only from PUBLISHED timetable entries for the absent teacher. If the grid is still draft, or the teacher has no entries on those weekdays, or the leave range contains no working days after holidays and weekends, nothing is created.

Where does the substitute see the periods they have to cover?+

On /timetable under the My substitutes tab, which is available to teachers and to structure managers. Cover rows created from an approved leave are already CONFIRMED, so there is nothing for the substitute to accept.

How do I find periods that still have nobody in front of the class?+

The substitute coverage report walks each working day in a range, matches teachers marked on leave against their published periods, and separates covered from uncovered. It also warns when a teacher is on leave but has no scheduled periods at all.

What happens to cover rows if the leave is cancelled?+

They are set to CANCELLED rather than deleted, so the history of who was asked to cover what stays visible.