Teachers should receive a 1.8% premium for not working from home

[noblegiraffe]

Interesting suggestion from the NFER who say the teacher recruitment crisis shows no sign of abating.

They suggest at minimum a 3.1% pay rise this year for teachers (govt recommendation is 1-2%) but interestingly, to make teaching competitive with other graduate jobs that allow some element of working from home, teachers should receive 1.8% extra on top of that.

I think commuting costs used to be a given for any job, but now it’s something employers are going to have to start thinking about paying for if they want people in the office.

https://www.nfer.ac.uk/press-releases/teacher-recruitment-and-retention-crisis-shows-no-signs-of-abating-new-report-reveals/

But it’s not covid anymore, there aren’t children around.

You don’t need a camera and computers have microphones.

At home people can use their own tech, they can use their phones FFS.

You really are a ‘can-do’ do kind of person aren’t you.

Yes, I know the person logging in from home can use their own tech but they are going to have a bit of a shit experience of the meeting if they are logging into a meeting with no camera so they can't see anything/anyone and can't hear anything anyone is saying. Been there done that.

You’re right, it’s all hopeless. There’s nothing that’s ever going to make anything better.

Seems rather strange they won’t be able to hear anything but of course I’m sure microphones on schools don’t work in the same way as everywhere else.

Odd though, because I’ve definitely attended hybrid meetings with people sitting in schools. Must have been a miracle.

And the funny thing is that you assume I don’t know anything about teams or hybrid meetings and just patronise me instead of thinking that maybe I have experience of what you are talking about, know what happens in meetings in my school and why having someone logging in from home to them wouldn’t really work for those meetings.

I also note that you didn’t comment on my post laying out what is really needed and continue to witter on about what is agreed to be tinkering around the edges.

Some of what you said matched what I said above. What would like to discuss?

Social services? So schools aren’t dealing with stuff that isn’t their responsibility?
Additional cover so there more flexibility?
Structuring timetables to provide more flex?
Treating teachers like adults?
Putting parents evenings online?

You’re the one nitpicking about tech and why nothing will work for your school

You may say some of it’s tinkering round the edges but it can help individual teachers feel listened to. Lack of autonomy was a factor in the study you linked to. Why aren’t teachers trusted by their SLT to teach? Why must a teacher stay at school merely to see the children off one day a week?

I am sure that, where hybrid meetings would help, schools will eventually offer them, if they dont already do so.

I think, in the main, hybrid meetings will help very few people and, in the main, will not solve the recruitment and retention crisis.

You’re the one nitpicking about tech

I’m the one who has used the tech in the spaces we use for meetings and know the sorts of things we do in the meetings that wouldn’t work as a hybrid meeting due to experience of having done that sort of thing before and you are the one talking down to me like you know more about it than I do.

I’m speaking generally. You cannot see past your own school and your own experience which whilst valid for you is not universal.

Agreed they won’t solve it. They might however help some teachers feel slightly less fed up at having to hang round for a meeting. Might help general mood, might stop them quitting.

We have meetings straight before or after school when we have them-with parents, whole staff, phase or training. They generally happen at 8.30, 3.30 or 3.45. 95% of us wouldn’t be able to get home in time for the meeting to start.

Where meetings are during the day-usually led or attended by people non class-based (head/SENCo), they are often remote with parents/LA/EP/Social Care at home and our staff at school.

What I want improved to make me stay (and would make me recommend it as a career) is more pay, more PPA, adequate and timely funding for SEN/personal care so teaching staff aren’t changing nappies and toilet training whilst being held responsible for the academic progress of 29 others and scrapping/reforming Ofsted.

You seem to think you have found a great solution with online meetings which, as teachers are telling you, is mostly unworkable and wouldn’t make much difference anyway. Move on.

Tbh, that's the kind of thing the DfE workload people will come up with.

I'd certainly like to go home if I am free period 5, no questions asked but that is more for work life balance.

Unfortunately , whilst recruitment crisis deepens and Covid and other viruses continue to circulate incessantly we are needed on site more and more for cover.

No I don’t, it’s a suggestion on the basis some posters above said they had to stay around for meetings.

But evidently it will never ever work, nor will anything else so you all just carry on as you are, with nothing ever getting better.

As for the move on instruction, I’m not in your classroom and you’ve chosen to harp on about virtual meetings.

Tbh, that's the kind of thing the DfE workload people will come up with.

Indeed, which is why workload has increased since the government pledged to reduce it by 5 hours per week.

Because they are not tackling the real problems.

@LittleBearPad - rural areas have many schools without mobile or IT connections. Makes any choice of virtual meetings impossible. There just isn't the infrastructure in all parts of the UK.

I also have a group of schools where their location means that IT is massively ‘held’. Security reasons. ( I don't want to divulge where).

Hybrid meetings wouldn't be a drop in the ocean regarding workload. Most of my meetings with outside agencies have been done by Teams for some time.

For me to return I'd want to be able to come in, teach my subject well, offer the best pastoral care I can, have time to run a couple of enrichment activities and then go home to my family.

No I don’t, it’s a suggestion on the basis some posters above said they had to stay around for meetings.

Yes, fair enough. But workload is mostly about how much actual work you have to get done, not about where you are when you do it.

Teachers on Teacher Tapp might want to see the relevant question today!

There seem to be people who have never worked in teaching who think that they can solve teachers' workload problems with their useful suggestions that betray the fact that they don't know what they're talking about.

When those suggestions are shot down, they are then accused of not wanting to find solutions and only wanting to moan...

Absolutely this. There are few things more irritating than being told to stop being negative, and to be part of the solution not the problem, when literally every teacher knows what would solve the workload problems. Lots and lots more money. Not to pay to existing teachers, but to hire more. But it's a catch 22 situation. Reduced workload might encourage more people to train as teachers, but you can't reduce the workload until you've got more teachers (and the money to pay them).

Absolutely this. There are few things more irritating than being told to stop being negative, and to be part of the solution not the problem, when literally every teacher knows what would solve the workload problems. Lots and lots more money. Not to pay to existing teachers, but to hire more. But it's a catch 22 situation. Reduced workload might encourage more people to train as teachers, but you can't reduce the workload until you've got more teachers (and the money to pay them).
Absolutely this.
Even if they can't hire lots more teachers to reduce class sizes, fund allied services properly so we can focus on teaching the 29-33 children in front of us and those children can have their needs met.

Some interesting points here since I last checked.

We have held all parents' evenings online since 2020. It's not perfect as a lot of our students live in rural areas with crap (if any) broadband. Ours was upgraded 2 years ago and is great now. Parents' evenings are on a non-working day for me so I log on from home and get paid extra for them. However, I am still expected to watch some meetings on non-working days in my own time, which I bitterly resent. Thank goodness for the 2x feature.

I refuse to use my mobile phone for school-related things. I don't have my school emails on my phone in order to retain the last vestiges of my sanity. If I am required to be available 24/7, I need to be paid 24/7. The only thing I have on the phone is the bloody authenticator app which I need to use in order to log on remotely. I refuse to use my personal laptop for school things. As a music teacher, anything I produce in terms of arrangements or backing tracks on a school machine is owned by them. So I produce them on my own laptop (MacBook) and allow the school to use them for free as I can prove the provenance of them.

I accept that I am old and grumpy. However, my classroom management/ pupil behaviour & engagement is never an issue. My current school respects my experience. I wish this bloody government did. I love working with my students but the crap that comes from the DfE means that I am probably in the last 18 months of my career.