The Workforce Agreement Monitoring Group (WAMG), also known as the Social Partnership, has written to local authorities setting out the basis on which the provision that teachers should rarely cover for absent colleagues should be implemented from 1 September 2009.

The National Agreement on 'Raising Standards and Tackling Workload' signed in January 2003 provided the basis for work by schools to create time for teachers and headteachers to focus more of their time on teaching, and leading teaching and learning, including through:

• progressive reductions in teachers' overall hours
• changes to teachers' contracts, including � in 2004 � a limit on the amount of cover for absent colleagues that teachers and headteachers could provide 
• new arrangements for deploying support staff.

The National Agreement included an objective that teachers should only rarely cover and, in 2007, schools were advised that they should expect to achieve the position in which teachers only rarely covered from September 2009.

The WAMG letter and accompanying documents set out the basis for implementing 'rarely cover'. The letter describes the changes that will be made to the STPCD and accompanying guidance to give effect to it. These changes remain subject to the normal consultation that is undertaken for the whole of the STPCD prior to its formal implementation. Read the supporting documentation on TeacherNet.