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/

I can get perhaps 30 to 40 between 7.30 and 8.15.

That sounds like a school issue, rather than a scheduled send issue.

Policy is that we put all work on teams anyway

Massive increase in workload.

It's actually not as bad as it sounds. I bulk upload every file that I might use at the start of each unit and there they stay. In the subject I lead, I do that for all members of the department so they don't have to.

Yes, it's an admin task but it doesn't take long because of the way I file things - I'm simply copying folders across.

If I create something new to teach on Monday, I don't add that, unless it's homework - in which case it gets added when I put the assignment up.

As a PP said, students rarely look at the work set anyway, and it's way less time consuming than being asked to set Fred some work when he's poorly.

We don't do any of that. If a kid is too ill to be in school, they're too ill to work. If they can work, they should be in school.

Excluded kids get set generic work, same as those in isolation.

The ill kid thing used to be an exception (long term sick for an op etc) but seems to be becoming the rule. Or a child has been off with anxiety, parents expect all the work for them to catch up on. The problem is that in many subjects, it's not as easy as upload a ppt or a link to a website. And they never do the work anyway.

I always send work for excluded children because exclusions can be challenged is work isn't provided. Again, they never do the work.

Indeed. We set that on Teams too, so you can see that not only did they not do it, they didn't even look at it.

The vast majority of my emails come while I am teaching. Most of them say 'Ian is wearing trainers/ has anyone seen Gladys?/interminably long email explaining a meeting/ the toilets are locked due to flooding/Ian has lost his blazer/ Gladys has been found/ don't forget to do your pointless data eight different ways'
Did we work in the same place? Isn't it a shame that your post will resonate with so many people.

One of my favourite emails were ones reminding people to do their wellbeing tasks, which weren't "due" for another week because some people were complaining that they'd done theirs and others hadn't yet.
The irony was lost on some people.

Yes "setting work" is a whole other issue too isn't it. I get it with the adults I teach where they want me to "email the lesson" if they weren't there.

The thing is - I taught. We discussed. We did some activities. None of that can be emailed.... Just reading a chapter in the book is never the same for my subject.

I have a bit of a conspiracy theory fear that some people think we can just put information in power points and then anyone can "deliver" them....

Its alresy a bit like this in some of the "no excuses" style academies where work is centrally produced and there seven a script for some bits and any kid not following 100% has behaviour policy thrown at them.

This isn't the skill of teaching. And if people are "trained" in these academies and it's seen as a solution to cheap teachers etc my fear is it's anyone reading frim a power point and a bit of self quizzing and that's that 😕.

We don't want this for education.

"We read and discussed The Banquet Scene"

That totally misses the point of the lesson. It's why I'm glad that I'm not expected to send work to sick kids.

There are no resources for that lesson on Tesms, either. Because the only resources are me, the class, and copies of the play.

Why

@HelloMiss

Heating is optional. We rarely have it on and it's fine

How very down south of you 🤣

Yes Mrs Hamlet that exactly! (different subject but same principle)

When academies want everything turned into bullet points to memorise that lesson we have truly lost the joy of education.

I'm absolutely with you on this one. I do upload PPTs to Teams but these are basically PPTs to remind my brain what I'm going to do that lesson - they are really too sketchy for anyone to use to 'catch up' on the lesson they've missed.

I'm teaching. I'm talking - we are discussing, I'm posing questions, I'm stretching people or challenging people. The discussion might go in a different direction with different classes. They are doing tasks that some can tackle alone, and some will need some more clarity to allow them to start.

It's not really something that is 'Teach yourself about Student Opposition to the Vietnam War' for example. You had to be in the lesson for a lot of it to make sense. Plus - at GCSE (where this example comes from) there is an awful lot of source interpretation, including political cartoon sources, which many students need quite a lot of help/prompting or explanation of. I can stick the source on the PPT - but if you aren't in the lesson and don't understand a key point in it, I'm not there to help interpret.

That's great. I'm really glad they've done that. I actually think it comes across more professional as well.

O yes- we were explicitly told by SLT that our planning and resources had to be teachable by a "non-specialist". Supposedly in case we were away and there was a cover teacher.

It beggars belief that numpties like this are running schools.

Its interesting hearing the discussion on materials being ready for non specialists to teach if people are off. I have heard this as a governor of a secondary as a 'good thing'. although to be fair to the SLT there, they are often the non specialist stepping in when we really struggle to recruit.

I get the impression from this that slt elswhere dont teach?

There's a world of difference between "materials ready for a non specialist to deliver" and "teaching"

That's absolutely crazy.
I can turn some of what I do into a resource but that's a whole other job and would take time.

Unless we have power point lessons we just read and you can copy files that's actually a huge ton of work. And just in case.

All madness.

Going against the grain with two things here.

Science needs two rounds of mocks to expose kids to all papers at least once in full - it's 6 exams in total. One of my children attends a school where they only do one set of mocks and they and their friends are complaining endlessly about lack of exposure to the second papers and I have to agree with them. Where schools do 3 in one year is where it becomes a waste of time.

The other is emails. I work when it suits me, which is often very early or late as I need a mental break after teaching and/ or meetings, so I leave as soon as I can every day. I can't stand receiving 10+ emails at 8am when I have 15mins to deal with all of them (because many are actionable that day). That's stressful. By all means send them at 1am if you're that person, let me deal with it at 5.30am because I'm that person. Just don't expect me (or anyone else) to.

A lot of my workload stress comes from poor organisation and poor communication from those in charge. The type where we're informed that data is expected in by 12pm in a week's time (great) but the marksheet isn't open for entry until the night before. Where we're informed about which students sit an exam (and will therefore be absent) on the day they're sitting it and so have zero time to plan around that (no point doing a content-based lesson if I have less than half a class). Same with trips. Or planned cover where materials appear 10min before I'm expected to teach it, ideally in a subject I haven't got a clue in (say, a German lesson displayed completely in German and without answers). Anything that tells us something needs to be actioned before the end of the same day.

No. You can reduce my workload by:

• stopping the expectation that everyone is doing a club, especially with unrealistic expectations (e.g. after-school STEM club without a first-aider available)
• reducing the amount of duties staff do: the more you teach, the fewer duties you should have, but it seems our senior leaders do two a week while bottom-rung teaching staff and TAs do one daily
• being realistic with deadlines
• not coming up with an annual new lesson scheme format which means that all resources have to be reworked every. sodding. year. (just why? The specifications haven't changed since 2018!!)
• communicating in a sensible and timely manner. I once worked in a school where all important events for a week were summarised on a document sent out on the Friday before, including who was involved when, and with an "events coming up soon" at the end. Beautiful.
• virtual parents' evenings. From a workload perspective, there is a definite start and end time with defined breaks as opposed to some parents droning on 10mins, pushing everyone else back. My last parents' evening, one set of parents turned up 15mins after the end of parents' evening and still expected me to see them (senior leaders did, too). They saw me turn off the lights, about to head home. Virtual parents' evenings are also safer. In one place, we were alone in a room, sitting in a way we had no escape. One set of parents laid into me and I had no way to excuse myself and leave to get support.
• allowing me to set self-marking homework. Just because it looks pretty in books doesn't mean that expecting me to print off 35 sheets per class and taking 15mins per week to go over the homework and stick it in is a good use of my time. There are free platforms out there, let me use them.
• quality assuring in a common sense way. Why are some schools still insisting on full lesson observations three times a year (with all the artificial prep and full-scale meetings that follow) when fortnightly learning walks give you a much fuller picture of who can and can't teach, where issues are in lessons and where a little slip with feedback on is more productive than a 30min meeting?

With the exception of the virtual parents' evening platform, all of the above are free and would make a world of difference already.

TL;DR apply common sense over giving me 1.8% more. That little won't help me stay if all the other shite still exists.

Time in the working day to respond to emails really should be a minimum really these days..

It obviously can't be at 8 for everyone but to lower the teaching load so there are periods available for the email amin and associated stuff as well as prep really ought to be standard...

Two things Thrall

What in fresh hell is this one duty a day thing?? I would not work in that school!

I think if , as a culture, we weren't so obsessed with exams, teaching to tests and results, the kids would not be complaining about not having practised them and lots and lots of associated tasks and data drops would vanish. But theta's a big fix, not for individual schools. We have two sets of mocks. There is not time to teach new content in between them and I lose approximately 4 weeks of teaching time. No wonder I can't finish the spec.

You couldn't be teaching cover lessons. You should just be able to sit there and do your marking.... I complain lots about my school (and rightly so) but we hardly ever do cover so we got that bit right. It's increasing though as purse strings tighten. I would kick off if work left was not 'sit down and shut up'work.

That's three things...

I remember the Teachers' Workload Agreement. Those - genuinely- were the days!

Totally agree with this. During the pandemic nobody seemed to understand that online materials were no substitute for actual teaching.
There's definitely a drive to de-professionalise, just look at Teach First and the new apprentice scheme. But the shit of schools not having enough experienced staff to balance the inexperienced ones is now very much hitting the fan.