Part-time and directed time?

[flutterworc]

Will preface this with the fact that I am happy with my school who are very accommodating.

Myself and a friend are part-time (me 0.6, her 0.8) in a large secondary school. There is a 2hr after school meeting that is directed time in the diary, but it's on our day off. We will both incur childcare costs due to this.

We briefly spoke with a member of SLT who told us we would be expected to attend, but this somehow seems unfair, though I couldn't say why. Just a vague sense of financial injustice really, I think!

I'll go, and I won't be grumpy about it, but does anyone know whether that is actually be expected?

[madrose]

You need to work out how many directed hours you 'owe'. Remember being part time, your total directed hours will be pro rata. Yours is 60% of the annual directed hours, your friend will be at 80%.

You need to add up, your teaching hours, non-contacts, parent evenings, open evening, celebration evenings, faculty meetings, year meetings, cpd meetings and we even include dedicated revision clubs and extra-curricular sessions.

Then work out what's left. If it helps, when I was on .8 i went way over, .6 you should definitely be in excess.

We calculate what we 'owe' at the start of each year. Full time and with all the extras - I have exceeded my directed time.

Hope that helps.

[Waterlemon]

I've never been expected to attend dt on my days off unless it was for something that all staff were expected to attend like safeguarding. On those rare occasions, I would usually be paid to work the afternoon doing data or subject leadership duties but it's not a given. Parents evening is always arranged for the days we are working. We normally do 2 evenings for each class so this usually works.
It's a difficult one as we are legally obliged to keep our practice up to date, at the same time we shouldn't be made to work outside our contracted hours.
All the pt staff at my school are experienced teachers,and we have a lot of newly qualified staff so the dt provided isn't always relevant anyway.

[monkeysox]

Should not be on your days off. You should have been given a statement of directed time at the start of the academic year so you .could see which things you are expected to attend.

[PurpleAlerts]

I work 0.6 and am never expected to attend meetings on my day off. I have attended a few LA EHCP planning meetings on days I don't work as they always fall on my day off but I am always given time off in leiu.

[thatsn0tmyname]

I work two days a week. I go in for parents' evenings on my day off. We have twilight insets which is pro rata and I go in for those, too. I usually avoid open evening but went in this year as a favour because we were short staffed. I also go in for insets on my day off but claim overtime on those. It's a pain but my mum is great and helps out.

[thatsn0tmyname]

Are, not is.

[d270r0]

Time spent attending meetings etc on your days off cannot be counted as directed time. The school can request that you attend but should pay you for the time. This should include travel time. Only time on days you work can be counted as directed time and you should be attending 0.6 of a full teachers directed time, ie. 0.6x1265hours over a year. You should agree which things you will be attending with your line manager at the start of the school year.

[rollonthesummer]

I have had lengthy discussions about this in the past. In the end my local area union rep got involved and explained it very clearly.

It is not the case-as I had previously thought-that if you work 2 days of the week, you must work 2/5 of the insets/training/staff meetings. This is a common misconception. Teachers are required to go to insets on days that they work.

If every staff meeting or inset was on a Monday and you don't work Mondays-you would never be expected to go. It is therefore in the interest of the SMT to arrange insets on different days of the week or offer staff pay for the day and hope they will come anyway.

[MsMermaid]

Colleagues at my school who are part time are expected to attend the correct proportion of directed time. So for inset, we have 5 days worth, although 2 of those days are split into twilight sessions. Someone on 0.6 is expected to attend 3 days of inset (could be 2 full days and 2 twilight's, or 1 full day and 4 twilight's) and you choose which of those you attend, some may be on your day off depending on the inset.

Parents evenings and meetings are a bit different, if you teach a class you attend their parents evening, even if it's your day off. They do spread the days out so nobody should be doing every parents evening on their day off, but it will happen sometimes. They pay travel expenses to attend parents evening if it falls on a day off, and if anyone wanted to claim for childcare I think they may be able to although nobody ever has.

If it is an important, one off meeting I suspect you will just need to such it up. If it's going to be a regular thing that meetings happen on your day off that's a problem that smt need to resolve, you shouldn't be coming in regularly on your day off, that's the point of it being a "day off"