Hi all
I am an English teacher in a secondary school in an area that is selective (nearby grammar schools). Our school results weren't as good as we'd hoped last year and, as a result, things have been a bit tougher than before. Our system of measuring progress (assessments and reporting etc) changed this year and workload has been crazy because of this. The need for 'robust' progress data outweighs the need for robust teachers, it seems.
Anyway, English is obviously traditionally a subject with a heavy marking load but all of the above has meant that my department are absolutely drowning in marking and planning. It's always been difficult, and we've always taken lots home to do at the evenings and weekends but this year it has become totally unsustainable. We are all struggling and miserable because of it.
I appreciate that my experience is limited to my subject and that different subjects have different challenges but it is becoming clear that, in our particular situation, there are teachers in the school who are able to get their planning/marking work done in school hours and leave at a reasonable (early) time without taking any work home with them. We all get paid on the same pay scale and (more importantly, as far as I'm concerned) we all have the same P&P entitlement. In essence, we, in the English department, are expected to do a SHED LOAD more work and the sheer volume of this means we are doing an ENORMOUS amount in our 'home' time.
Now, I promise you that I'm not being deliberately inflammatory in asking this (I'm really not trying to start a staff room bunfight!) but I'd really like your perspectives/opinions as to whether this is fair? When I have spoken about this with people at school I get a lot of knowing nods and 'who'd be an English teacher' comments... but surely our higher workload should be acknowledged in more time to get stuff done?!
Sorry if I sound bitter (I probably am, to be fair!)...
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Unfair workload?
38 replies
clevername · 05/02/2017 22:00
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