Relief · supply · substitute

Relief teacher, supply teacher, substitute — same class, same packet.

Call the job what your country calls it — relief teacher in Australia and New Zealand, supply teacher in the UK, substitute teacher in the US and Canada — the packet the covering teacher needs is the same: today's day plan, the class list, who can help, dismissal and who each child is released to, where things are, and work that runs itself. SubPacket stores your class once, and on the morning you're out, one tap emails that cover packet to your school office — which works in any country, because it's email.

What a covering teacher needs, in their words

Ask relief and supply teachers what they want waiting for them and they name three things: cover notes, a day plan, and a class list. That is the same list US substitutes give — plus the parts that keep a stranger's day safe: who can be trusted to help, who each child is released to at the end of the day (and who they must never be released to), the health lines that have to be followed, and what to do if something goes wrong. The full nine-item checklist — written from what covering teachers say they look for in the first five minutes — is in our sub packet guide.

The packet, mapped to your words

Your cover notes become the packet's stored facts: the day plan is the at-a-glance first page, in the order your day actually runs. The class list is initials by default — first names only if you choose them for a class — and last names never appear, which sits comfortably with how carefully schools everywhere treat student names. Seating, dismissal, where things are, your duties and the "what to do if…" basics are stored once alongside it. When you're out — sick, at an appointment, on a course day — one tap assembles the packet from those facts and emails it to your school office as a print-ready PDF plus a no-login link. The office can confirm receipt with one tap, and whoever covered can leave you a report-back from the same link.

Set up from what you already have

Most classroom teachers already have some version of this written down — last term's cover notes, a day plan in a shared drive, a timetable. Paste whatever you have and Patty, the built-in setup assistant, pulls out the facts, shows you what she found, and saves only what you confirm. Nothing is invented: a packet built from saved facts only, with gaps flagged as gaps. Setup and your first packet are free.

The honest limits

Three, stated plainly. First, SubPacket is in English only today, and the product's own words are American — it will say "sub packet" and "school office" where you might say "cover notes" and "front office." What the covering teacher reads is assembled from your stored notes, in your words. Second, it is priced in US dollars: the SubPacket Pass is $60 a year in USD, with a $39 founding launch offer, and your card converts at its own rate — there is no local-currency pricing yet. Third, SubPacket does not book your cover. Every country books relief differently — a school system, an agency, an app — and logging the absence stays your school's process, as it does for US teachers with theirs. Inside SubPacket, the absence signpost is an optional free-text note you write yourself ("booked through the school office by 6:30", "agency covers it"), so it adapts to whatever your school uses and never blocks the packet.

Quick questions