Why are inset days included in published term dates?

[ClumpingBambooIsALie]

As far as I understand it, when Baker days were introduced, they were five days for teacher CPD, taken from school holiday (i.e. the number of days kids were in school stayed the same).

But when term dates for schools are published, they always include the inset days as term-time days.

This makes it look as though time is being taken away from teaching kids, which it isn't.

But my main issue with it is that it can also be confusing if, as with my local schools, the term dates are on a different part of the webpage or a different page altogether from the inset days, if the inset days have even been decided yet (so you have to mentally knock those ones off the official term dates when working out when kids are expected in school). Surely the vast majority of the people who need to know term dates are actually in need of information about what days the kids are expected in school? It seems like it would make more sense for inset days to be tacked onto one end of the term/half-term as it is now, but considered not term-time for the purposes of published term dates… is it to allow for training days partway through the term or something?

(I don't have kids in school, I use term dates mainly to predict parking and traffic in my area, among other things.)

If the inset days where all taken at the same time then there wouldn't be enough external providers to be able to provide the required training for every school. There is also the issue of schools having different term dates.

Some of our training is department based which means that we can use these days to visit other schools or get specialists in to do training.
Sometimes inset is done whilst other schools also have inset days and sometimes it is beneficial to see teachers actually working depending on what the CPD requirements are.

Thanks Fripp — I'm confused as to why that means inset days need to officially count as term-time — do you mean because of this: is it to allow for training days partway through the term or something? I asked that because my local schools and the ones I went to as a kid always seem to tack inset days onto the beginning or end of a holiday or half-term, but I can see that if you really wanted to do one on a day in the middle of term it would make it harder to list it as not being part of term-time.

If the day falls in the middle of term then it will be have to be published with term dates. It makea it clear for anyone looking at the school website when these 5 days are.

Actually just looked at my schools site. It has Monday 5th as term begins.

Does not mention that as staff we are in Thursday and Friday.

inset days don't count as term time, they have always been an extra taken from the teachers holiday not the pupils.

Why some happen in the middle of the week is so that the same pupils are not missing the same classes every time. They are published so the parents know when pupils are not required in school.

Local authority decides term/holiday dates. These are the same for every school in the LA/county. (Academies are different).

Schools decide INSET days from the term dates, they can be any time. Schools publish them so parents and staff know when the extra days are. They are not holiday days - they are often, but not always, tacked onto holidays. If specific training is required with outside providers that can only be booked on certain days, it could be a totally random day in the middle of term. This is avoided because it's annoying. But it is allowed.

Schools have to do a set number of inset days a year. These are taken in 'term time' but are factored into the number of days the children attend school.

So your school doesn't list inset days (at least, not those ones) as term-time Tinker? That's… different to what I'm used to.

One teeny tiny reason it also bugs me is that my local area is extremely tight for residents' parking, and there are five or so parking spots in front of the school which are legal outside of term-time, providing just enough extra spaces for everyone to relax more about parking, but illegal during the day in term-time. Counting inset days as term-time is five days a year of easy parking we're being robbed of

We have some tacked onto holidays but not all.
They are all listed separately in our school website calendar, and on any paperwork we send to parents.

This year we have 2 this week, before the children return next week, two individual dates mid term in autumn and spring and we still have one to announce. We are waiting to hear back from training providers and will publish the final date shortly, but will be giving parents lots of notice regardless.

We specifically list them separately so that parents know which dates are official holidays and which are INSET.

No the calendar just includes the dates the pupils are in school.

I'm aware the days are factored into term-time so that kids are in school the same number of days Rebecca — my query was more about why all the schools I've been familiar with list the term dates inclusive of inset days and then specify inset days separately, rather than considering inset to be out of term time. A classification/terminology question, really.

Fripp, yes, I mentioned that the number of days kids were in school stayed the same and that the five days were extra ones teachers had to come in for.

It's just that as an outsider, when it looks like inset days seem to be pretty much always (at least here) situated in the liminal zone between holidays and term-time, it seems like it's almost unnecessarily confusing to count inset as term-time when most people who are using term dates need information about when the pupils are expected there.

If it's so schools can schedule inset mid-term, or something to do with local authority admin combined with the need for schools to have different days from one another, then so be it.

DCs school have 4 tacked onto holidays and one on a random Friday, I quite like this one as it's a chance to go to places that are usually stupidly busy in holidays. I may feel differently if I worked Fridays.
The school lists the inset days in the term dates section though, so something like:
Thursday 1st -Inset
Friday 2nd - Inset
Monday 5th - term starts for pupils

So flexibility for the school too Abraxan? That makes some kind of sense. Though I'd guess less convenient for some of the parents, depending how much notice they get… I'm not really too invested personally in that though

Thanks for all the info from everyone.

How do you know it is inclusive of INSET days? The council LA publish term dates and the school set the calendar to include the inset days which are you looking at?

Pupils do 190 days per year.

Our school doesn't publish inset days and helpfully shows the number of days each term which add up to 190.

Teachers are expected to do 195, so five inset days over the year. Some of these are done as "twilight" sessions tacked on to school day

I work for an LA on a term time only contract (am not school based or in education) and inset days count as term time in terms of my contractual working days. I always thought that "officially" therefore inset days are considered part of the school term. I agree that some schools publish confusing calendars though, when they publish the full term dates including inset days, and then list the inset days separately. However I've always found my children's schools good at clearly communicating the days that children are in school and the day they need to return after a holiday. Especially in secondary when there is often a staggered start depending on year group. Newsletters, parent emails etc and text messages are always sent out so that everyone is aware. Therefore if you are not a parent but looking online to work out when the children are in school you might not find it easy!!

cherrypiepie because when I go onto my local schools' websites, they list term dates, then elsewhere have a list of inset days, which are on dates inside the term dates. For example, one of my local schools I'm looking at now has a term dates page which lists Autumn term starting on 1st September, then elsewhere on the page says 1st and 2nd are inset days. There's also a calendar widget thingy running down the left which says they're inset days, which appears on the front page.

I can't remember exactly but pre-INSET days the school year must have been five days shorter. Those five days were probably tagged on in either July (later finish now) or September (earlier start), or a combination of both, eg school years might often end on a Wednesday or start on a Thursday. I vaguely remember from my early primary years that the school year didn't start before 5th/6th September but now it is usually 1st September. So that lengthened the school year to 195 days but schools can choose when the best days are to take them. INSET days are definitely part of the official term date. Eg, as a teacher I must come in to work from Thursday 1st September which is the start of term although the pupils do not return until Monday 5th September. Your local authority will publish the term dates.

We have inset days randomly tacked onto term-time weekends.

if you are not a parent but looking online to work out when the children are in school you might not find it easy!!

Exactly… for one thing, I kinda feel like if there are legally-binding road signs imposing different rules during term-time, it should be made very obvious to the general public when term-time is And I'm sure I've heard stories of confused parents bundling their kids off to school on inset days by mistake, though maybe communications are better now.

It's only very slightly confusing, though, and not a massive enormous deal… I was just wondering why it was classified that way. Wasn't expecting quite such emphatic pointing-out of the fact that inset days aren't being stolen from kids' education 😅 (especially since I mentioned that in the OP).

Teachers are expected to do 195, so five inset days over the year. Some of these are done as "twilight" sessions tacked on to school day.

Where I live it’s 5 inset days PLUS twilight sessions.

That sounds fun… 😐

Having just filled out our kitchen calendar with term dates & INSET days I’ve counted the actual days one of the children's schools is open for children and it’s only 188. I counted as it seemed wrong compared to the high school. Does anyone know how the school gets away with it (it’s a voluntary aided school I don’t know if that’s why)? I thought all schools should be the same.

All the schools I've worked in have occasionally changed INSET days. Not the whole year's worth, and never the ones at the beginning of the year before pupils start in September, but some of the mid-year ones sometimes change for various reasons (booking external groups, response to an ofsted inspection, unforseen circumstances like a death in school) so it makes sense to publish them separately as they're liable to change. Pupils should be available for school on all the days of official term time, and they'll know as far in advance as possible which of those will be INSET days.

No, they should have 190

Listing the INSET separately gives a bit more clarity for parents, as they are not always attached to holidays.

Schools can’t all have the same dates- many use external providers for specific training, or safeguarding updates. Some schools use INSET days for moderation, so those dates will be governed by exam boards.

INSET days were taken from teacher holidays, they don’t affect term time for pupils.

If it is a local authority maintained school then the local authority sets the term dates, but schools are free to put Inset days where they wish, which will be why the Inset days are included within the term time on the website. Is this what you were getting at? Academies are free to set their own dates but many use the local authority ones as well.