Welcome to Lead to the Way. I'm one stop shopped for mod leadership among teachers. My name is Ann Burn. I've been a post primary teacher for 23 years and acted as Deputy Principal during the 23-24 year. I completed a Master's in School Leadership in 21 and I concluded that the best way to learn is from each other. I am a qualified life coach and mentor also. There are many ways to lead, so let's dive right in and listen and learn from those that can lead to the way for others. If you would like to work with me for interview preparation or some life or career coaching, reach out to me on Instagram at lead.thewaycoaching linked in Ann Burn for email me on
[email protected]. I'm Ann Burn and this is the podcast Lead the Way. (upbeat music) Class cover is a platform that connects schools with substitute teachers and SNAs. Schools can build their network, post booking requests and get cover confirmed in minutes. Substitute teachers and SNAs can manage their availability, connect with local schools and get booked through the app. Class cover is launching in Ireland in 2026. Over 5,000 schools, that's won in two schools in Australia are registered with the platform and they are launching in Ireland this year and I want to find out a little bit more about it. So with me is Ben Rocher from Class Cover. There is an Irish lead Eva Gallagher who he might mention as well and some of you might come to know. So Ben, you're really welcome to lead the way podcast. - Thanks very much Ann, really good to be here. - Good. So Ben, tell me a little bit about yourself and your background and how you came to this point. - Yeah, now I rise it also. I'm a teacher by background. I've been an education for about 25 years. I actually started off as a tennis professional, would you believe, but also got a teaching degree at the same time. So it was in and around the classroom in many different forms and in about 2011, it was actually my daughter's future primary school. I was called three times by three different teachers to come and teach that day as a casual teacher. And I said yes to the first one and then I said no to the second and no to the third and I thought, hang on a second, there is something wildly inefficient going on with these processes. And that's very much a long story short, but skip forward about 12 months and we had a product in the market. And then it's been the business roller coaster ever since and very proud to say that we're now a very pleased to have five and a half thousand schools using our software in Australia. - Wow. And had you a background in software or did you just kind of get the people in the room that knew what to do? - Yeah, look, and that's the story of my professional life is being getting the people in the room, trying to be a good person, trying to engage great people. And you mentioned Eva, for example, we've recruited an amazing team in Ireland of people who pretty much have found us more than we've found them. But I just couldn't be prouder of the broader class cover team, but we just have a team of Irish rock stars who are doing such great work. And it's been such a pleasure to be reconnected with Ireland as well. I lived in the UK and Europe for about five years in the early 2000s. And it's been a long time since I've been back and it was so good to visit back in April. - Ah, fantastic. Okay, so let's jump right in and you're going to tell me then, what is class cover and what it's not? - Yeah, so class cover is a software as a service that helps schools manage substitute teachers in SNAs. We're not a teaching agency. And it's not really a misperception that we've had in Ireland as such. We get a lot in the UK, a lot in Northern Ireland. But our understanding is recruitment agencies is such don't really play a huge role in substitute recruitment in Ireland, which is a good thing for us. There's made getting a message across a lot easier. But we're a web platform or a mobile app and put simply, we solve the very big problem of when you need a substitute teacher in a hurry and you don't want to go out to just a whole group of random teachers or SNAs, you can contact, find and book from your group of preferred subs in very, very quick time as in a matter of seconds. - Okay, all right. That's really interesting. I know as you said, it's very well established in Australia, I think one in two schools using it. So how long is it established there? And did it take schools a while to switch over and invest in such a system? - Yeah, so been going about 15 years and proud to say that we're on the contract with three of our departments of education in Australia. So three state governments and about six Catholic education systems. We've got 33 in Australia. As in their geographically split up. And when you ask about them coming on board, of course it's change. And I was saying to you just before we hit the record button that one thing that I as an owner but also our entire team of very respectful of is that educator cups are constantly overflowing and they're constantly being told to do more. I've always said I had this turn of phrase, is if society's got a problem, give it to a teacher to fix, it could have been road safety in the 70s, sex at the 80s, nutrition in the 90s. Now it's social media and AI. And so I'm always very mindful that there is just so much for an educator to do. And even very, very good solutions can be hard to get implemented with good reason because there's the change management at the onboarding time. And as much as ClassCover is a very, very effective solution, not only is it effective, it's extremely easy to get going on with as little as about 10 or 15 minutes training. And you're underway, you're booking your teachers. - And can I ask in Australia, is it the individual principal's decision or is there a kind of a higher up kind of state or a government buy in more so first? I'm just curious about that because we're like little mini independent islands in Ireland and different schools. Yeah, exactly the same. Look, I think we're at about 770 individual schools subscribed to ClassCover before we won our first enterprise contract, which was 140 schools from Brisbane Catholic Education. So the State of Queensland, their capital city, Brisbane, their Catholic education system, they engage us. So it can come from either direction. It's an individual school, school principal, even deputy principal decision. Or we talked to head office and we can roll out across an entire system as well. - Good. And just so people can kind of get a sense. Like are there many people that, if they sign up to this that are available on the other end of the phone? Because obviously they can go Australia, there's a time difference and we have all the systems in Ireland that are connected to Australian companies as well. And that is a factor. So who is on the other end for support? Is there many in the company or behind the scenes? - Yes, we're a term of about 40 at class cover. And the thing is that substitute teacher management is done at anti-social and cookie hours of the day. And we recognise that a long time ago. So in respect of our Australian support coverage for a very long time, we've been six a.m. till 10 p.m. every single weekday and then eight a.m. to eight p.m. on weekends. Because we know that there's principles booking substitute teachers at Barbecue's on a Sunday. And or their book number at six a.m. in the morning. Now what is really exciting about bringing Ireland into the class cover family is that our support will go 24 hours. And that is to say that we will have live chat, email and phone support 24 hours a day. So that means that if you need to, indeed help resetting a password or booking a teacher or you need to add a new user, then our team are there. And as you can probably imagine 15 years of, you know, millions of bookings and millions of pieces of feedback mean that we also have a very comprehensive knowledge base in a self service support infrastructure where just like on leading software products, you can look up RFIQ's your knowledge base and hopefully find out your, the answer to your question very quickly. Okay. So again, I'm curious why launch in Ireland. It's a relatively small country compared to your own. Like what's attractive about this country? The people and the golf courses. Yes. That, that, that, well, in terms of your business, now, Ben, look, get back on track. Okay. So why Ireland? Interesting story. So we, we had our hands for, with Australia. We have several other products off the back of the subteacher booking. We do professional learning for teachers. We've got a recruitment jobs board, where, where education jobs can be posted. And it actually kind of landed in our lap, the Irish opportunity. We'd never really seriously looked overseas. And it was, it was actually an Irish, a young man in Ireland, who took it upon himself to use an AI developer, the most 2025. If you told me this two years ago, it would never believe you. and he actually copied that platform.
using an AI developer, would you believe? Actually called it class cover, which was good for us, because if you hadn't, we probably couldn't have done much about it. But we're able to take the appropriate actions because we'd had our IP used in the way it was. And in February, I had a conversation with him. It was all pretty civilized and he's an entrepreneur, just like I am, and I like to hustle as well. So again, fair play. But what he actually did was validated the market of Ireland. And it is interesting across the world, obviously education is global. There's a relatively small number of countries that replace absent teachers with short term substitutes. I'd probably say there's less than about 25. And all those 25 are a potential market forest, but of course there's language barriers, there's even just cultural differences. And that makes launching a business. It's people underestimate how hard it is to launch a business in a new country. Now in respect of Ireland, we've had that validation done for us by someone else. It seemed like there was a lot of enthusiasm for our product, although they were reacting to a plagiarised version of our product. And then we sort of scratched the surface and we said, look, OK, looks like this huge use of WhatsApp, Facebook groups, all these key things we look out for when there's not a dedicated solution in place. We made some conversations by virtue of having lived in your part of the world for period time, I had some connections in contacts called in a few favours. And when you talk about Ireland being small, it's still 4,000 schools, which makes it about the same as New South Wales and Queensland put together. We are first and third biggest state here. And so it's not England size, but it's definitely a very-- it's a good size. We're 5,500 schools, this 4,000 schools in Ireland. So it gives you an idea that it is still a good opportunity. OK. And I know you said that you had a few connections there. Did you engage with many school leaders or educational bodies as part of your market research at all? Yeah. So one of our-- what I call sort of unfair advantages, which every startup business needs, was a Facebook group called Irish teachers in Sydney. And actually set up by the consul general, the Irish consul general in Sydney, who actually fell enough-- I knew her, and she ended up moving on to another role, and what have you. But we had a great relationship. And she had set up this Facebook page to basically say to Irish teachers in Sydney, hey, you enjoy yourself in Sydney. But when you're ready, we're going to make it really easy for you to get back into schools in Ireland. And almost at a support network to smooth the pathway for them to come back to Ireland. Now, there's about 2,000 teachers on that group. And I put a post up on there. And I said, hey, look, is anyone use ClassCover in Sydney? If you have, we're launching in Ireland. We'd love you help to sort of get some validate the market, get some feedback, some support, some referrals and testimonials, and honestly, it exploded. I had about 75 direct messages from people who were-- I'm proud to say enthusiasts of using our software that either had their jobs made easier or they picked up a lot of work by ClassCover. OK. And now I'm very happy to help. And when you throw that in with a few personal connections, could have been-- parents of my kids, or could have been old work colleagues, people I played tennis with back in the UK, it meant that we felt like we were pretty well connected from a get-go. OK. So let's get down to basics. So how does it work? It appears to be, I think, free for teachers and SNEs to upload a profile on to begin with. Yeah, that's right. To be very, very clear, it is always free for teachers and SNEs and always will be. For 15 years, I mean, thankfully, we don't hear this very often anymore. But I think there was sometimes a bit of a perception that perhaps at some stage teachers would have to pay. They will never have to pay. We equity is very important to us. But also, schools don't want to have to exclude teachers, let alone good teachers, just because they don't choose to pay to be part of a platform. So we charge the schools, a license fee to use the software. Hopefully, the schools see value. And they say, OK, well, I'm going to pay class cover and amount of money. And I'm going to save 10 times that in time and stress. But the teachers will never pay. Good. And look, if they're not in regular work, obviously, money might be an issue for them. So that totally makes sense as well. I see also that schools who opt in, they can ask their regular subs to upload a profile too. So maybe they could actually be living locally and they know them. So tell me about this profile. And what teachers will be asked to upload that will then be visible for the perspective schools to make the best decision then for their school and their needs. Yeah. So the profile class cover is incredibly comprehensive. And it's interesting in an AI world, this has become even more relevant and valuable. Because where recruitment's going, and I'm sure you've seen some of this, and is that effectively, you've got people optimizing a CV with AI so that they can be recognized by a CV checker that's being optimized by AI. So it's sort of AI versus AI. Now, what we really pride ourselves on doing is to yes use technology, but to make sure that we give the opportunity for teachers to paint a 360 degree picture of themselves. And that, of course, is the basics contact details, profile photo, qualifications, referees, even immigration status so they permanent resident, are they a citizen, are they? But then on top of that, also things like a video buyer. And it's just to say you can use your smartphone, record a 30 second video and just say, "Hey, I'm Ben and really looking forward to working at your school." You know, this is my area of strengths and what I like to do and what have you. We give the opportunity for references to be put up on the profile. And so this all creates, along with the availability, it paints a very, very clear and human picture despite the fact that you're using technology with in respect of substitute teacher recruitment. OK. And then I presume each school then has their own profile as well. And then maybe talk me through maybe what they can upload because I know you mentioned something about they could have induction packs for people once they arrive in the school and even there's a space to upload lesson plans. So is this option widely used? Because I know myself haven't been in that position that look, you just sometimes just need somebody at the top of the class, but there seems to be other options to build on it as well. Yeah, absolutely. And this in a, in a teacher supply challenge environment, what the school can do is as important, in my opinion, or from what we've learned as what the teacher can contribute in respect of profile. So the school creates a profile, same thing. All the basics, emergency contact number, everything you'd imagine when you're signing up for any other software platform. However, we take it a step further and give them what I sort of call like a LinkedIn profile for their school. And that's an opportunity for the school to say, hey, we're a great school to be a substitute teacher or an SNA out. They can upload, again, a deputy principal can upload a video profile and say, hi everyone, we're a great school to teach it. Make sure you look after Anne when you get to the school because one thing we know is that substitute teachers, when they're going into a new school, they actually feel a fair bit of anxiety when they push open the staff room door. And if we can give an opportunity to serve familiar face and they open that staff room door and go, oh, there's Anne, I saw her on the video, great. They immediately feel more at ease. And what we're always trying to do is we can't create new teachers. But what we can do is make them feel more respected, give them that sense of belonging that everyone in life wants. And hopefully, if they're working three days a week, maybe they'll think about a fourth. Or if they're on the list of three schools, maybe they'll think of putting themselves on the list of a fourth or a fifth. And then on top of that, in respect of induction and onboarding lesson plans, all of that is usually communicated to a sub-reness in a really time-stabbed environment. You arrive at the school at 830, here you go, there's the classroom. Now, if we have downloadable induction documents onboarding documents that can be looked at the night before or the week before, if lesson plans can be communicated from the absent teacher to the sub or the SNA, then rather than seeing it on the desk 15 minutes before they start, they're actually good. They've got an opportunity to get across what they're being asked to do. And again, better for the students, which is the most important thing, but also better for the school and better for the sub. - Okay. And I presume the substitute teacher can't upload directly that it would be the admin, the deputy who's in charge of it, maybe you're the principal, that would have to upload whatever the teacher wants the sub to teach. That'd be right.
They can come in from any direction. So you could have a substitute teacher, or so you could have a deputy principal, I should say, making the booking. - Yeah. - And then the teacher who is absent might also have class cover access. And they can do the booking calendar. They can send a message to the sub and just say, "Hey, thanks for taking my class. "Watch out for her hand. "She's a bit of a naughty student." Or they could also upload their lesson plans despite someone else having made the booking. - Interesting. And I suppose as I'm talking to you here now, I know that a big issue is that external comes in for the day. And we know that students have individual needs. They have additional educational needs. But if the person is just coming in for the day, there's not enough time really to express that. Now I know there's an issue there around GDPR, but I suppose what you're seeing is that the, maybe that the permanent teacher could highlight some of those needs to the sub coming in as well. Because it's important they know the kind of students that are in front of them and their needs. - Yeah, absolutely. And look at the heart of that is that for many, many years, we've wanted to shift the thinking from a subteacher, being a babysitter, to a substitute teacher. And pretty much globally, it is 10% of a child's education will be taught by a substitute teacher. And so that's more than one year of their 12 or 13 years education. So it's significant. And so we want the subteacher to be in the best position possible to continue the education of the child, not just to be a placeholder or a babysitter. And it's actually disrespectful to the subteacher and their profession to think of them as such. And so really what they comes down to is how can we, with all things considered, JDR privacy or all the guardrails, how can we improve communication to allow for substitute teachers to be better prepared, to be more respectful as professionals, to be given the best chance to success. And for them, be given the best chance to be called back, to work again tomorrow. And for also, for the schools to have as little turn over as possible, with their substitute teachers and their sort of stability across the board, as long as, again, the, I guess the communication is done, done right. - Okay. And again, as I'm speaking to you, I'm thinking of the admin side of it. So in terms of the subneeding payment, can they upload their bank account details or is that something that happens then separately with whatever goes on in the school in relation to that? - Yeah, so we don't have any financial information, we don't hold any financial information on class cover. What we do offer the schools is the ability to download what we call a payroll summary. And this also represents a good workforce starter opportunity, whether it be about a individual school or an entire system. But in respect of your question around bank details and whatever, so the school might do a fortnightly payroll. - Yeah. - And rather than your school admin running around the school, going, "Oh, hey, Ann, who covered you last Wednesday or you've got a sticky note saying, I've been was covered by either, it all sits on class cover. You put in your date range, you download your payroll summary, and then you use that payroll summary to inform the payroll process. And we've found that that will save. We had a deputy principal tell us the other while ago, it used to be a four-hour process every fortnight, taking it down to our 15 minutes. - Okay, yeah, that's interesting, 'cause I know that a lot of schools in Ireland use TyroVS, where I don't know if you've heard of the some of the Mara Australia thing as well. And I know as a deputy, I would have, you know, you input through there, and then the person in the office can see who's self-doat class. Is there any integration between the two or do they work side by side? So, early days, I think the honest answer is, is the honest answer is no. But I think to be very transparent, I think we need to prove ourselves a little bit in Ireland before those integrations can take place, which is no different to Australia. We had to show that we were a good company, a reliable trustworthy company, before the established players would contemplate integrating into us. But I guess for context, we've just finalised an integration with the entire Queensland government, our state to the northeast of Australia there. 1,300 schools, the biggest human capital management system, software project in Asia Pacific right now, and we've just integrated with their HR and payroll. So, yeah, we've got runs on the board, so to speak, but we do also understand we're new into Ireland and we need to build trust over time. Absolutely. Okay. So, having been in charge of class cover for a year as Deputy Principal in a school, I know in Ireland the big issue is, as I'm sure it is in Australia, the guard of vetting, the child safe guarding. And there's a circular in Ireland 31, 2016, and it says very clearly that it will be a criminal offence, other than in certain limited circumstances for a school authority to commence the employment of an employee without first obtaining a vetting disclosure from the bureau in respect of that person. So, when a sub comes on board, they need obviously to provide a copy of their teaching quality, that's their teaching council registration number, a vetting disclosure, what we call a statutory declaration form, a sign form of undertaking, photo identification, PPS number, which is like your government number. And then obviously it can't take details of relevant recent employers' references. Like, the list goes on, and you're there scrambling at night time to try and get us up. So I presume the onus is still on the school to ensure these requirements are infulfilled, or how has class cover managed similar legal requirements in Australia? - Yeah, exactly the same way. And exactly as you've said it, and this is what I've said to schools in Australia for many, many years, the owners of approval still does sit with the school. - Yeah. - Class cover is a platform that is, I guess, sort of neutral or agnostic when it comes to the school system or requirements itself. And that might be you're a government school, you need this criteria, you're an independent school, you need this type of criteria. So the checking still does get done by the school, and I guess to indicate sort of our experience in and around that in New South Wales, they are biggest state in Australia. You have to have your approval to teach, your work with children check, and then 11 mandatory training certificates that all have different expiry dates, some are one year, some are three years, you get, you achieve them on different websites and different portals. Now, all of that needs to be done in every state in Australia. Again, the onus is on the school to do that checking. And please to say that again, we've obviously been around a long time in Australia. We now have real-time verification for two states in Australia. We're literally a green or an orange or a gray check indicates whether all that has been put in place. But yeah, not professing to solve that administrative burden at this point in time. We've got some features that are coming like a, effectively like a pending approval list, for example. So if an SNA wants to work at your school, or sub wants to work at your school, you can effectively add them pending approval. Yeah, there will be a two-way messaging ability where obviously the school and the sub can not just exchange emails, but live chat and even have a conversation. And then in addition to that, you can also, you will be able to add expiry dates to the sub or the SNA so that when their next certification is due to expire, they can be notified 30, 60, 90 days out. And at the very least, that is just doing what we try to do best, which is keeping teachers eligible to teach for as long as possible. Fantastic. Okay. So, you know, I'm sure that you've looked at the market and other competitors. So what do you think that class cover offers that is superior based on your experience in Australia? And that's a huge advantage in the Irish market. Yeah, so I'd like to think that, our platform is completely feedback driven. We have some extremely cookie business roles and I'll give you an example of one. And that is that when you send out a booking request, so you need a teacher, you realize you need a teacher at 1 p.m. You send out a booking request. Now, you don't want your teachers picking up the phone in the middle of class. So you can set up and send the booking request, but delay the send until 3.30 p.m. or 4 p.m. or whatever time you ought to delay it until. And that was literally a feature where schools said to us, "Hey, we want to get these booking requests out of our head as fast as possible, but we don't like the subteach as being tethered to the
their phone. So what can we do about that? We worked with them and that delay send was was born. And that would be one of probably a hundred two hundred features that have been driven by school feedback. Now when we look at Ireland and again much to our delight, we went wowed that the headaches that have been experienced and the workflows that are being undertaken so closely matched that of Australia. We'd like to think that that 90% of that 15 years were the feedback driven development will be of huge utility to Irish schools. On top of that just by virtue of having the size and the scale that we do, again we have we will have the 24 hour support. We've got the we've got the team of 35. We have again a team in Ireland. So yeah we're a small business and and again we're a we run we run in a pretty agile way and we have a good time doing it but at the same time with with I guess the the number of schools and teachers that we have we've learned a lot of on the way. Okay so I know that you're launching for the new academic year this year in Ireland and your social media is open running and so forth. I see some webinars available for people to learn a little bit more about it if they wanted to follow you. Would you like to give me an overview of how how principles can find out more and I don't know if you want to talk about the cost for schools as well? Yes so in respect of how they can get in touch with us. Again there is there's our social media on Instagram and in respect of pricing we're finalising the pricing but one thing we are launching in mid-August will be ClassCover Lite and ClassCover Lite will give schools the opportunity to use ClassCover for free. It will like any free version of a product it will be feature limited you'll be able to make bookings you won't have access to the entire teacher database but you will be able to get a good taste of ClassCover in respect of the pricing. Again we're taking a lot of feedback on what will be acceptable to the Irish schools but that's something it will be releasing very shortly. Okay fantastic so why should schools consider ClassCover? Ultimately like if you if I spoke to a deputy or a principal in Australia that's been using this for a few years what do you think they tell me about the benefits of ClassCover? Yes so first of all I guess again from my experience school principal comes after us at a conference and we're attending the NAPD conference in Gourway and in October can't wait to be back and I said what do you guys do? And then we say with ClassCover we've got a software as a service that helps you save heaps of time to manage substitute teachers. Now it really is a time and cost equation and that is to say that we just want schools to see that when they use ClassCover that they are saving such a phenomenal amount of time that can be redeployed into improving student outcomes that it is very much worth the cost of the subscription. We don't have long-term contracts we don't ever want to be solving what I would call non-problems so to speak but again we think it's pretty unbelievable that the heavy use of WhatsApp is so prevalent in Ireland given that and I'm on a few of those WhatsApp groups. The fact I'm on those WhatsApp groups says a lot how do you know? You're in a different country but when I'm in those WhatsApp groups I see the financial scams I see the people who aren't teachers just like me who are sitting on those WhatsApp groups and just watching those booking requests come through can anyone teach at this school can anyone teach at that school and so not only is there a huge time saving and convenience upside there is a significant risk alleviation upside as well for the schools and then finally and and I don't know sort of where this sits in respective importance but we try to do our best to do more with less in respect of the teacher supply in Australia and we look forward to doing the same in Ireland and that is to say that like I said we can't magic up new teachers but we are the best in the business at unearthing teachers that can and want to work and connecting them with schools who need subs or SN8 and and so whether it be managing your own list of subs or whether it be clicking that fine new teachers button and having an opportunity to review teacher profiles contacting them vetting them ultimately inviting them to join your school's list. We see a day where perhaps yeah every number of subs on a school this might be 10 we say a day where that could be double. Okay so we're coming into the summer holidays here now in Ireland and people might be listening to this that are that they don't have secure contract and they will ultimately be the sole so when can they start to upload their details onto the Irish version of class cover. Yeah so so in your show notes was I'll send you this for your show notes there's an expression of interest link where where subs and schools can sign up to basically put themselves on a wait list. That's ticking over it's always good fun to wake up in the morning here in Sydney and see how many of them have been added to the list overnight which is always always great of great enjoyment and then in around mid August at the very latest the subs going of the opportunity to create their profile. The schools that we're talking to who have expressed interest will get them all set up and look like I have a turn of phrase that I use I now help them work with a lot of small businesses here in Australia and I say the first 50 to 100 customers you have in any new business need to treat them like family and I just to say that those early adopter schools those schools that put a bit of faith in us they will get the absolute it won't be just letting forget this is a faceless software business they will get the five star member of the family treatment out of frankly gratitude for them giving us a go because we know it's an investment of time it's a it's a new product and yeah so there's no question off the table and in respect of having a successful experience the entire team will be there to support brilliant okay well Ben look it's been an absolute pleasure to talk to you and I really do wish you and your team the very best of luck and welcome to Ireland thank you very much and Ben absolute pleasure talking thanks for having me take care thank you for listening to lead to the way please follow the series on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts share with colleagues and follow me on LinkedIn as Anne Burn also on Instagram as lead dot the way coaching and if you are interested in doing a podcast email me on lead to the way podcast find at gmail.com or if you would like to avail of interview or life coaching email me on lead the way coaching eight at gmail.com thanks for listening
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