Staff meetings/ part time

[Dandelionrarrrr]

Hi all,
I am part time M,T,W. EYFS teacher in a state primary. I am returning to work after Mat leave and am feeling a bit overwhelmed at the moment. I’m feeling a little sensitive and struggling in my first few weeks back. I am picking up the pieces of the previous teacher who left in jan and there is masses to catch up with, I’m basically redoing September with added pressure of being half a year in.
Unfortunately for me, my school has a lot of young, free, single, dedicated to the job teachers whom enjoy working above and beyond their hours. I can’t do this particularly with the addition of a 45 min commute. I aim to get in at 8.30 and leave at 4.30. Doing additional work on my days off from home.
My biggest issue I’m facing (and have always faced) is the staff meetings. They start at 4.15 and end at 5.15 on wed. Often these are irrelevant for eyfs or just dull and unnecessary with a lot of chatting and time wasting. My biggest issue is that my school has two sites and I often have to travel 20 mins (never reimbursed) and I am further from my children and my home. It’s all a big stress to me and I just end up watching the clock and dreading the meetings. I feel embarrassed when I leave at 5 whilst everyone else is mid flow.
I’m waffling, but seeking help and advice. I also have phase meetings biweekly on tues. I just feel I have no time to do the normal, important things like organise my classroom, catch up with assessments and paperwork that comes part and parcel with being a teacher.

[noblegiraffe]

Have you looked at the directed time budget and worked out exactly how many meetings you need to attend? Certainly not all of them on 0.6.

[Dandelionrarrrr]

No I haven’t. Where would I find more details of this. Thanks

[noblegiraffe]

Your school should write a directed time budget each year that you can ask to see detailing how many hours are allocated to teaching, meetings, parents evenings. INSETs etc to make up the 1265 hours. You then sit down with your line manager and go through it so that you are only doing 0.6 of what a full time teacher is expected to do.

A lot of schools are a bit crap at doing this. But you definitely need to have a meeting with your line manager to at least agree you aren’t doing all meetings and INSETs.

[BackforGood]

I was going to say the same.
Earlier on in your post I was going to say that you have to do the meetings that are included in your directed time, and your directed time is proportional to your time worked.
When you started mentioning the 2nd meeting, then you are almost certainly doing more than your directed time.

As noble says - you should be working 0.6 x 1265 hours of the year 'directed' by your school ('plus whatever other time you need to complete the planning and preparation, assessment etc') but they can't direct you to be in meetings etc over and above your hours.

As an aside, why on earth aren't they starting their meetings until 4.15 ? That's bonkers. I'd have thought most staff would feel the same.

[Dandelionrarrrr]

I feel like such a newbie, I’ve been teaching for 5years now. In the past I just got frustrated by meetings without completely knowing my rights.

Thank you for your advice. I’ve had a look through some of the schools policies but it isn’t glaringly obvious so will probably need to speak to some one. I feel like I’m the only one who ever challenges working conditions. I’m the difficult one.

I completely agree about the 4.15 thing

[Dandelionrarrrr]

• posted too soon
  
  It’s to allow the —unwanted— travel between sites despite there being many, many SLT who could deliver these meetings.

[noblegiraffe]

Because the meetings start at 4:15, trapping the time between the end of school and the start of the meeting, that time also counts as directed time. If they’re having weekly meetings taking 2 hours of directed time each, they may well be going over the budget.

[sakura06]

4:15 start time is outrageous! You should talk to your union. That's a lot of trapped time every week.

[LolaSmiles]

Echoing what others have said already about trapped time and directed time.
It sounds like you're probably over your 0.6.