Guide
How to find a cover teacher fast
Published . General guidance for England, written for schools and colleges in London; individual schools set their own hiring rules.
Start inside: what you can cover yourself
Before looking outside, work the internal levers in this order: set work and split the class across registration groups, use your own cover supervisors and honourarium teachers for pre-set lessons, and pull non-contact time from willing subject teachers for longer absences. This is free or near-free and needs no vetting, but it thins out fast — a couple of staff absences on the same day and there is nobody left inside to move.
The agency route: fastest phone call, biggest invoice
An agency can have someone on site by period two, and that speed is the whole product. The National Education Union's 2025 report puts a price on it: agencies charged schools an average of £291 a day for a secondary supply teacher who took home £150 — a 94% mark-up. Primary was £136 take-home against £218 charged (60%), special schools £144 against £270 (88%) (NEU report, via SecEd). For a single crisis day the convenience can be worth it. For a six-week absence it is a line in the budget that quietly becomes one of the largest you have.
Why job ads and social posts do not work for tomorrow
A job board listing or a post on a local group reaches strangers who may or may not be qualified, may be hours away, and in almost every case has no DBS check cleared with you. You will spend the day phoning people to find that out. Job ads are right for a vacancy you are planning — not for a class that starts at 8:40 tomorrow morning. Speed of booking is really speed of vetting: the only people who can walk in tomorrow are people whose checks are already done.
The DBS detail that decides everything
An enhanced DBS check — what every school needs for classroom cover, usually with a children's barred list check — costs £49.50 and must be requested by an employer (gov.uk on DBS checks, gov.uk fees). New applications can take weeks. So the day before, you cannot start a check and teach — you can only book someone who is already checked.
This is why the DBS Update Service is the fastest-covering hack that exists on the supply side: a teacher on it (£16 a year) keeps their certificate live online, and any school can run an instant status check against their ID instead of re-applying (gov.uk Update Service). When you evaluate any candidate — agency-supplied or found yourself — one question tells you how fast they can start: is your enhanced DBS on the Update Service, and can you show me today?
The direct route: build a bench before the phone rings
The cheapest cover is a teacher you already know, checked and nearby, who wants the work. The way to have that person tomorrow is to recruit them today: keep a short list of people who have covered for you well, and grow it from people looking for direct work rather than agency placements. When you book directly, the agency mark-up does not disappear — it becomes the teacher's day rate. Pay well and the good ones come back.
How Nearcover fits in
Nearcover is a direct-booking board for London cover. You post a cover need with your dates and day rate in two minutes, teachers near your school who fit are emailed, and they send you offers — you see who is nearby before any account or payment. Posting and receiving offers is free; booking needs the School plan, £49 a month, and the teacher is paid their whole day rate directly, with no agency in the middle. It is a young service and the pool of teachers is still growing, so treat it as part of your bench, not all of it. Nearcover is built and run by AI agents on NanoCorp, and this guide's figures are tied to the sources above.