NISTR Supply Teacher Newsletter - September 2023 | Education Authority Northern Ireland

Welcome to the latest NISTR Newsletter

This newsletter will outline key processes for supply teachers using NISTR for the new academic year.

We are pleased to report that over 230,000 bookings have been made in the system since the NISTR launch in August 2022. In June, we had 7,192 live Supply Teachers within the NISTR solution, and 12,311 bookings for 73,634 days were verified for payment by 1,115 schools in relation to 5,259 teachers.

A total of 684,334 days has been approved on NISTR since August 2022 and transferred to DE for payment processing.

NISTR Survey – Thank you for your time and feedback

The user feedback we received since launching NISTR was invaluable to shape the development of the NISTR solution. We thank you for your time and contribution to the latest survey issued in June. The survey responses help us to understand user experiences, and to assist all users in using NISTR to its fullest potential.

If users encounter any difficulties while using NISTR or have questions, our dedicated support team is ready to help. Please contact the NISTR helpdesk on 028 9056 6256, Monday to Friday, 9am-5pm.

The NISTR training delivered in June 2023 was recorded and is available to view online at: Quick Reference Guides - Supply Teachers.

This training includes a full demo of NISTR day-to-day processes, demonstrating functionality and enhancements to the platform, and will address user queries reported in the survey responses.

NISTR Survey – Summary Insights

As the survey was completely anonymous, we are unable to respond directly to participants, but would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge some key feedback responses received and to highlight available support resources in troubleshooting any queries reported.

Booking Management: A few participants mentioned difficulty in searching through their booking information, locating signed off days and viewing individual days within a booking block. Supply Teachers can access bookings by clicking on the booking widget on the dashboard. Bookings can then be filtered by typing the booking reference number or using the top columns and dropdown lists to filter by school, booking dates and booking status.

Audit functionality allows users to view changes to booking details (including when individual days were signed off and by whom) - for more information please refer to the ‘Teacher – Audit Log’ Quick Reference Guide: Teacher - Audit Log

For further support in managing your bookings, please view the support materials and step-by-step instructional videos available from: Quick Reference Guides - Supply Teachers

Please do not hesitate to contact the NISTR helpdesk on 028 9056 6256, Monday to Friday, 9am-5pm or by emailing [email protected].

Mobile Experience: NISTR is designed to be mobile responsive with all functions available across desktop and mobile devices. Please be aware that NISTR is only accessible using Edge, Chrome, and Safari mobile web browsers. These can be downloaded from the relevant App/Play Store on your phone. Please ensure your mobile operating system has been updated to the latest version available.

Short Notice Supply on mobiles: We would encourage users to login to NISTR as soon as they receive a notification about a Short Notice Supply post via email/text message, as once these positions are filled, they will no longer appear on the NISTR dashboard.

For more information, please refer to the Short Notice Supply Quick Reference Guide.

To update notification preferences, please refer to the Teacher - Managing Account & Notification Settings Quick Reference Guide.

Use of NISTR – Top Tips

Safe sourcing of Supply Teachers:

NISTR is the only recognised and safe mechanism for sourcing, contacting and engaging supply teachers. Engagement outside of NISTR is in breach of safeguarding guidelines.

If a school makes an offer to a teacher by means other than via NISTR, then the booking should be created within NISTR on or before the first day of the engagement. This will update the teacher’s availability to benefit other schools sourcing supply teachers and enable the accepted booking to be signed off and transferred to DE for payment processing.

Back to School - update your profile:

It is important for all teachers to have an updated profile on NISTR to enable users to appear in school search results and to be booked by a school. The default availability status in NISTR is ‘unavailable’, therefore it is important to review and update your availability on a regular basis to indicate you are available to work.

To update your profile, please ensure you indicate on your availability calendar which days you are available for work, specify your subject specialism(s)/cover preferences in the core subject field and set the distance you are willing to travel. If there are some schools you wish to work in, but are outside of your preferred travel distance, you can add these to your school list.

To understand more about how to update your availability within NISTR, please follow our Managing availability and Schools Selection Quick Reference Guide.

Recording Permanent Part-Time Contracts:

Teachers on part-time permanent contracts can indicate their working availability on non-contracted days either within the school they are already employed in or within their preferred school list. Teachers can record contracted days within NISTR by selecting the toggles when completing PTP within Teacher Info.

Teachers will still appear on booking searches if they meet the 75% availability criteria. However, teachers may have to contact the school making the offer to see how the booking can be amended to fit around any part time contracted days.

For additional guidance please follow the Part-Time Permanent Contract Quick Reference Guide.

Update your NISTR Knowledge:

As NISTR has released many functionality updates over the last academic year, new training has been delivered and all support materials are updated.

Please view our updated Quick Reference guides, training videos and FAQs for Supply Teachers: Quick Reference Guides - Supply Teachers

NISTR Support

Updated training is available to support users in the use of the new functionality updates to NISTR. If you missed the training in June, the recorded training is available at any time from: Quick Reference Guides - Supply Teachers

All Quick Reference Guides, FAQs and training videos have been updated regularly to reflect system improvements made to date and can be accessed from: Quick Reference Guides - Supply Teachers

Users can contact the NISTR helpdesk on 028 9056 6256, Monday to Friday, 9am-5pm or by emailing [email protected]