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/

The thread currently on active where a poster is considering a job offer that would require them to be in the office 4 days a week and posters are queuing up to say "fuck that" is also interesting.

I so wish I'd trained as something else. It's really depressing.

Can I ask a question if there are any teachers around, can teachers do their PPA session(s) I think its called from home? Presumably yes or am I being naive?

No, we can’t. We get an afternoon PPA and this is covered by a TA. We have to be around at the end of the day to see our children out, so can’t go home.

Why is that? Seems so unreasonable! So sorry to hear that.

Officially, because "health and safety"
Actually because we're not trusted.

Why though? My reception DC's teacher sometimes isn't visible at drop off and collection, obviously I have no idea why and he could well be on site elsewhere/in the back of the classroom/in the toilet or anything! But why does it need to be the teacher to see the class out? My child's teacher's PPA afternoon is covered by the specialist music and PE teachers, not the TA, who is still there being a TA.

Yes I noticed that and if its the same one they were getting a 10% payrise (above their current 3 days in/2 days wfh job) but most thought that wasn't sufficient compensation

One of the things that I've noticed in recent years is extra responsibilities imposed on schools/teachers often mentioned breezily in a news report as if teachers haven't got enough to do (apart from actually teach!!) already

As I said, I work across/with a large number of primary schools, in one of the largest counties ( in a senior local government role) - I know what I see.

I also scrutinuse school budgets.

It all confirms you are talking rubbish.

Genuinely think I’ve sorted the issue with teachers being over worked. They should work all year round and have 6 weeks paid annual leave which they have to take in the holidays. There fore they won’t have to work all evenings and weekends and will have time away from the children to do their paperwork.

and as an FYI will bin men, drs, police, nurses etc be paid 1.8% for not wfh! Never know anything so insane in my life

The head wasn’t happy having the TA see the children out to the parents and feels that should be the teacher’s job. We don’t all have class TAs and nobody has one in the afternoon, so there is no extra TA and no specialist teachers,

Genuinely think I’ve sorted the issue with teachers being over worked. They should work all year round and have 6 weeks paid annual leave which they have to take in the holidays.

Yes, that will help the issue that nobody wants to be a teacher any more…

Fantastic - as long as the government fund schools for the increase in teachers salaries to pay for the extra teaching hours.
More non contact time will help with planning, assessment, contact with parents, subject leadership, resourcing, contact with social services etc etc - and paid to do it.

Without government funding school budgets will not be able to pay the increase in every teachers salary, that will be required. You need to write to your MP.

Can I ask a question if there are any teachers around, can teachers do their PPA session(s) I think it's called from home? Presumably yes or am I being naive?

In my school you can take PPA at home, in theory.
However, you have to be ready to come in at short notice if needed. It may be that whoever is covering your PPA is absent. More likely that other staff absence/meetings means your PPA is changed at short notice.
Often PPA falls between other commitments- if you have an afternoon PPA, you may have a staff meeting or planning meeting at the end of the day, so would have to come back for that.

That’s a false statement. Disabled people have , for a long time, been able to have adjustments. Long before Covid.

That's ridiculous.

I've got to be honest I always thought teachers were heavily unionised so I'm really surprised to hear this sort of thing. I've always been really sympathetic to the poor working conditions that teachers report anyway but clearly it's worse than I even realised. So sorry to hear that. Perhaps more direct action needed? I dunno. Shit for you all.

But it isn't enough. With inflation at 3.6% the pay rise doesn't even cover that. Then another 1.8% for having to go into the office. How much is this really worth? £1500 - £3000 a year. Hardly competitive.

I'm not a teacher BTW, nor do know any.

Some of us are saying fuck that on there and agreeing that something will have to be done to incentivise teachers on here! They're both two different parts of the same whole, ie that employees have more choices.

Yes, I can see especially in secondary schools it would probably be logistically really hard to try and ensure more condensed blocks of PPA for everyone to be fair. Although again if it's just for the sake of meetings, plenty of workplaces in private and other public sector realms do hybrid meetings just fine so can't see why that should be an issue, set up Teams link and those at home can join that if more convenient, surely.

I'm a union rep!

There's no right to take PPA off site, and some staff would be disadvantaged by travel distance. But it is nonsense.

Might be a contributing factor to the core subject teachers leaving next week, leaving y11-13 without a teacher.

Some schools will allow you to, but many won't. Many crappy academies will try to direct what you do with your ppa time too.

I was a reception teacher. The teacher probably won't do this, because a lot of early primary ppa is prepping displays, resources, continuous provision, so access to the classroom is needed. I would have spent the 2 hours of afternoon teaching on paperwork in the staff room, then gone back into the classroom to prep stuff there for another couple of hours once children had gone home.

I thought that recommendation hit the nail on the head actually! It's just less of an easy fix (and snappy headline) than a 1.8% pay premium. We need to step back and look at the responsibilities we have placed on schools by cutting everything else.

I fear even with such a system there would still be pinch points throughout the year which would result in unpaid overtime. I can't leave the mock marking for a convenient time, for example. What we need is more teachers, to spread the workload out a bit during those pinch points.

Personally I'd love to see exam boards set and mark mocks.

Completely reforming Ofsted would be a major thing that would help people’s workload, especially in Primary when it comes to subject deep dives. I would say scrapping it, but that is a pipe dream. Remove Deep Dives, remove one-word judgements and end job losses/forced-academisation if the result is less than Good. That could be done overnight (Wales removed one word judgments) and would be free.

Cutting down a quarter of the curriculum would help and would also be free. It would make children less stressed and maybe they’d enjoy and remember more of the stuff because they would have had a chance to consolidate and embed the learning

Scrapping SATs/phonics screening/baseline would be free and would stop the incessant focus on teaching very specific things and teaching to the test rather than providing a rounded enjoyable curriculum. It might make children happier and want to go to school more which would help attendance, but governments like having things to measure, so can’t see those going.

A lot of the other possible solutions will cost a fuck tonne of cash:

More PPA needs more teachers.
More special school places need more buildings and more teachers.
Funding SEND in mainstream needs more money for support staff.

Ultimately though, people don’t want to join teaching and loads of those currently in it want to leave, so something will have to be done.

One of the difficulties with this, though, is that many teachers can't afford to lose the days of pay. I have friends who were prepared to strike the first time in the most recent rounds of strikes, but felt they just couldn't afford to the next time round.