Dealing with illness: a guide for teachers and education staff

This guide from Education Support discusses some of the issues that may arise for staff experiencing ill health. It is broken up into the following sections:

• Understanding your illness
• Communication with colleagues
• Self-care
• Employers’ responsibilities.

It recognises that suffering from physical ill-health and mental ill-health are equally important and should be treated as such.

In the section discussing how to communicate staff illness to colleagues, there are sub-sections with guidance around speaking with your line manager, with your team and with those you line manage. In this each of these sub-sections, there are tips for both short-term and chronic illness.  

The guide refers to government guidance around sick leave and signposts to the National Education Union for further information.

Using this resource

This resource is designed for:

• use by mental health leads working with students aged 5 to 19+.

Learning outcomes

This resource addresses the following learning outcomes:

• Access and utilise tools, strategies and resources to support their own mental health so that they can look after themselves.
• Identify and utilise tools, strategies and resources to confidently engage staff to help promote and support their mental health and wellbeing.
• Share simple evidence-based strategies and exercises with staff and pupils/students to help them manage their mental health and develop their own coping strategies.