Home - Sickness Insurance Scheme

The Sickness Insurance Scheme is available to Sheffield Primary, Nursery and Special schools, but not to Secondary schools. At present, 144 schools (approx. 95%) subscribe to the scheme. The scheme is non-profit making, with only a small proportion of the costs being taken for administration. Any surpluses are ploughed back into the scheme.

Schools are asked on an annual basis whether they wish to subscribe and premiums and benefits are agreed with them each year. It is possible to cover all categories of school staff for sickness absence, including part-time employees, but schools have a choice about which groups they insure. Benefits are currently worked out at approximately 80% of the average cost of absent staff and are payable monthly in arrears of any claim made.

Sickness Insurance Scheme - Changes for 2008/09

Good news:

No rise in the premium for teachers
Other premiums will rise by 2%, below the current inflation rate
Benefit rates unchanged –equivalent to 80% of supply costs
The Scheme is still financially viable having a satisfactory contingency to allow for an unexpectedly sudden rise in claims

Policy changes:

Premium payment dates- schools will be invoiced in early June and the date for the payment will be the end of July. Any school not paying their premium by this July date will have benefit payments frozen until such time as the premiums are received. The premium will be based on submitted Governor Approved Spending Plans. Where these have not been received by the invoice date, staffing numbers from the March budget interview will be used and adjusted at a later date.

Mid year joining-Schools may, up until the end of September, elect to add to the number of groups they insure during the financial year, with additional premiums being worked out according to the proportion of the year covered, but would only be able to claim benefits in respect of sickness arsing after the date of adding the new group(s).

Final submission date for claims-Claims can only be made if submitted no later than three months after the first month of absence. For example, sickness incurred in April can only be claimed for up until the end of July. Interim monthly claims may be made for part absences, and schools are strongly encouraged to do this.

Electronic claim form- Work is going on to produce an electronic claim form, but this is taking longer than usual due to Data Protection issues. Schools will be notified when further progress has been made on this.

The complete revised Scheme Policy document is now available here.

Administrative Matters:

Form 95 - a reminder: claims will not be met unless the relevant Form 95 is included. This copy must be sent to Financial Services, as we do not have access to the form that you submit to Payroll. We recommend submission of monthly claims and not waiting until claims have built up or the individual concerned has returned to work.

Back to top

Note: A consultation with schools on the existing policy is proposed during 2008/09 as we will then have a full three year's figures of costs and benefits for each insured category.

A Summary of the 2008/09 Premiums and Benefits Payable is given in the table below:

Group ref.	Group Description	Premium 2008-09	Benefit 2008-09
Group A	Administration	£235	£80 per day
Group CT	Classroom Teaching	£970 (held)	£160 per day plus leadership cover
Group CC	Classroom Cover	£575	£70 per day
Group CS	Classroom Support	£315	£60 per day
Group P-C	Premises	£816	£90 per day
P-CL cleaners only	Premises - Cleaners Only	£82	£6.75 per hour
Group O	Out of Class	£31	£6.75 per hour
Group S	School Support	£31	£6.75 per hour

Full details of the scheme, together with an application form can be obtained on our download page.