DfE considering making teachers work for free to make up for lack of catch-up funding

[noblegiraffe]

With the upcoming spending review looking like it will hit education hard with little extra cash for catch-up, the DfE is reportedly now considering simply making teachers do it for free.

They are considering a proposal to remove the 1265 hours cap on teachers ‘directed time’ which would mean schools could add hours to the school day and just timetable teachers to teach them for no extra pay.

This, to a sector which is already critically short of teachers, will only damage recruitment further, and push more teachers out of the profession.

They are flailing around trying to come up with solutions to problems of their own making that will, in fact, only make things worse. Absolute idiots.

www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/oct/01/dfe-considering-return-of-sats-at-14-and-axing-teaching-hours-limits

I assume Greenlake is merely here to troll teachers because directed time has already been explained, as has the fact that teachers work many additional hours.

The non-teachers are proving my earlier point. Teachers do not have the support of the public. Best advice I was given a few years ago was to stop seeing it as a vocation, and treat it as a job. Do the minimum you can do, nothing more, shop around for better conditions, show no loyalty or you WILL get screwed over. It has served me well so far.

greenlakes

There’s a big difference between ‘can’t handle’ a longer school day and can’t be arsed. The DC in Korea study for 16 hours every day. Clearly that’s not what’s being advocated here, but the vast majority of students and teachers can cope perfectly well with an extra hour of maths or English

You know South Korea has a really low birth rate and a high suicide rate.

Obviously not all kids are the same. Some could manage a few extra hours of maths and English every week. Many will do it but the quality of their learning will decrease (because they are tired).

I could do a few extra hours a week. But I expect to be paid for it. There is a very strong possibility the teaching of all of my lessons will decline. As I will have less time and energy to put into planning my lessons.

I found teaching between 2003-2017 pretty hard going, but that might be subject dependent.

@Greenlakes, You are not, of course, a teacher, nor do you have any regard for the profession, clearly.
If you took the trouble to educate yourself, you would know that for every hour of lessons, a huge amount of preparation and subsequent assessment needs to be undertaken.
Or, perhaps you do know that and do not care, and are only here to troll and goad.

1265 is directed time which includes lessons, meetings and duties.

If my directed time for Monday includes 6.5 hours of teaching, an hour's meeting and 15 mins break duty I will also work 1.5 hours before the children arrive, 1.5 hours after my meeting and an hour when I get home. = 4 hours of undirected time. So my working day is about 11.5 hours. Very normal.

Add in 2 hours of extra lessons to my directed time and my undirected time will massively increase too. Those extra lessons will meed to be planned Teachers, resourced, marked and assessed. Teachers cannot work 15 plus hours a day on a regular basis, see their own children and stay sane and healthy.

Need

Just like many other salaried roles, additional hours occasionally need to be undertaken and these are not paid.

Additional hours are most certainly not occasional in teaching. Directed hours don't include any planning, resources, assessment, displays, report writing, data and all the other admin expected in teaching. Take every hour in the classroom and add an extra hour outside of work to each hour and you have a clearer idea of what the actual working hours are. I'm not sure how many more times this has to be explained before people actually listen and stop acting like the whole teaching profession lies about their workload. There is a reason why so many are leaving and such a high proportion are considering doing so.
Our children deserve to have happy, valued teachers who aren't stressed and pressured to the point of breakdown.
A Facebook group "Exit the classroom and thrive" has over 30k members and growing and a alarming theme is people talking about picking out the tree on the way to work they could crash into so they didn't have to go in. This isn't a joke, this doesn't need more teacher bashing, people need to wake to and realise Education is in crisis and teachers are broken. Any parent should be terrified about what this government has done and what lies ahead as it's a mess.
That's not to mention covid and it's impact- this has been going on for years and the profession is broken and people are leaving in their droves. These are not people who are afraid of hard work- or who can't hack it in the "real world" as the favoured insult goes. These are people who cannot cope with the constant micromanagement, workload and the attitude that they should be prepared to put the job before their health and well-being and be treated like utter shit.

I do remember very clearly, sitting on the stairs having just slipped and broken my leg, thinking 'yessss, I won't have to go in to school for a while.'
And I quite like my job.

LyndaLaHughes

This isn't a joke, this doesn't need more teacher bashing, people need to wake to and realise Education is in crisis and teachers are broken.

I agree with you 100%. A huge amount, probably the majority, of teachers in this country are broken.

But successive governments, including the current one, don't care about this because they have discovered that there is a high level of acceptance of any warm body being put in front of a class, qualified or not, competent or not.

I am amazed at the level of tolerance parents show for this.

There is absolutely no respect for QTS now.

Just like many other salaried roles, additional hours occasionally need to be undertaken and these are not paid

My previous role had additional hours but it was excessive - it basically never stopped. It damn nearly killed me. I dread to think what it’s like being a teacher dealing with kids where you’re more invested in outcomes!

I am amazed at the level of tolerance parents show for this.

I don't think they know just how bad the situation in schools is. If they do, they don't think it's their child's school.

Lockdown really highlighted disparities in provision and resources, particularly between private and state. Parents were outraged then, because it was in their living room. Now it's back to out of sight, out of mind?

noble

I really wish that parents could be made party to the true realities of the levels of qualifications, experience and competence of the people increasingly staffing our classrooms (I refuse to use the term 'teaching lessons' any more after all I have seen).

They deserve to be properly informed.

But where are the unions when we need them to draw attention to the growing number of totally unqualified staff being used?

I just don’t think anyone can really understand teaching as a job unless you’ve actually done it. I started in 2006 and since then have worked full time around 12 hours a day 6 days a week. The pressure is beyond ridiculous; last year was the end for me; I had covid pneumonia and literally sat in a hospital bed with an oxygen mask trying to write 5 hours of lesson plans for my class as it was expected. I then ran myself into the ground with the pressure of having to return when I was so unwell; they couldn’t find supply that lasted more than a day and there were no other qualified teachers of my subject in the school. This was in an Ofsted judged outstanding school I quit in the summer and I have never felt so relieved. I loved my job beyond measure and yet I honestly think it would have killed me from stress. I’m now in a wfh job earning far far more per hour than I ever did. I am incandescent with anger about the destruction of my profession and the driving of teachers out of it. It’s a race to the bottom now and I honestly despair for the future of it.

What are youndoing now Myusername!?

Most people who leave teaching seem to end up in poorly paid roles. Whether due to burnout or difficulty transferring skills 😔

But where are the unions when we need them to draw attention to the growing number of totally unqualified staff being used?

They could do it, but what news outlet would pick it up and run it?

If MN is anything to go by, I saw a shitload of parental activity about lockdown learning but, er...very fucking little/AKA fuck all attention to funding cuts.

It's all about their child, which is understandable on one level but heart-sinkingly awful on another.

I had covid pneumonia and literally sat in a hospital bed with an oxygen mask trying to write 5 hours of lesson plans for my class as it was expected

No teacher has to supply work when they are ill: FACT. They are Ill.

This teacher went above and beyond, yet it becomes subsumed into the expected, which is why teachers are treated like shit.

And before anyone says how the school would know what should be happening; all lessons are extensively documented in units of work, so the port of call is the HOD.

Once kids are back at school many parents don't give a shit what the quality of education is like or how sustainable it is. Our children shouldn't be looked after by highly stressed and burnt out human beings. Teachers deserve better than the current situation and so do children.

@MilduraS

Posted before I finished. Are teachers allowed to strike? I'd support you all if you did.

Well, they used to be. The students at my secondary school (not me, my DF was a teacher) staged a sit-in in protest of a teacher's strike once. In my elder DC's primary school, when the teachers went on strike the parents went on a march through Glasgow in support.

Teachers can strike about pay and conditions, so in this instance, yes.

[quote GreenLakes]@WhenSheWasBad

There’s a big difference between ‘can’t handle’ a longer school day and can’t be arsed.

The DC in Korea study for 16 hours every day. Clearly that’s not what’s being advocated here, but the vast majority of students and teachers can cope perfectly well with an extra hour of maths or English.[/quote]
What about those who can't? DS3 is on meds for ADHD which wear off at 3. Any time after that would be spent disciplining him for distracting behaviour. It would be best for the class if he were exempt from the extra hours, even though he needs them.

@NemoSurprise21

noble

I really wish that parents could be made party to the true realities of the levels of qualifications, experience and competence of the people increasingly staffing our classrooms (I refuse to use the term 'teaching lessons' any more after all I have seen).

They deserve to be properly informed.

But where are the unions when we need them to draw attention to the growing number of totally unqualified staff being used?

The unions are there.

However how are the unions reported in the press…. As militant nutters…. Or not at all.

Please don’t start turning this into an amazing teachers v crap parents argument. Parents are also having to work long hours to survive often in jobs that pay a lot less than teaching. That is why they need kids in school. Some of them come home and start undoing the damage of crap teachers, qualified ones too. “The profession” went down a long time ago.

@PickUpAPepper

Please don’t start turning this into an amazing teachers v crap parents argument. Parents are also having to work long hours to survive often in jobs that pay a lot less than teaching. That is why they need kids in school. Some of them come home and start undoing the damage of crap teachers, qualified ones too. “The profession” went down a long time ago.

So you've turned it into amazing parents and crap teachers.

Nice one.

@Myusername2015

I just don’t think anyone can really understand teaching as a job unless you’ve actually done it. I started in 2006 and since then have worked full time around 12 hours a day 6 days a week. The pressure is beyond ridiculous; last year was the end for me; I had covid pneumonia and literally sat in a hospital bed with an oxygen mask trying to write 5 hours of lesson plans for my class as it was expected. I then ran myself into the ground with the pressure of having to return when I was so unwell; they couldn’t find supply that lasted more than a day and there were no other qualified teachers of my subject in the school. This was in an Ofsted judged outstanding school I quit in the summer and I have never felt so relieved. I loved my job beyond measure and yet I honestly think it would have killed me from stress. I’m now in a wfh job earning far far more per hour than I ever did. I am incandescent with anger about the destruction of my profession and the driving of teachers out of it. It’s a race to the bottom now and I honestly despair for the future of it.

This 100%.

I left teaching in 2015 after 28 years.

The 'profession' is broken beyond repair, and I agree totally that it'sa 'race to the bottom'.

Every day I ask the gorgeous little girl who lives next door to me whether she's had a good day (she's 8), and what she has learned. She's happy enough but invariably racks her brains to answer what she has learned.

The whole system is beyond ridiculous for all stakeholders and it is past time that we started pointing out that the Emperor has no clothes, and hasn't had for some time.