Teachers and school support staff now eligible for a Blue Light card

[noblegiraffe]

In case any teachers don't follow Mr P and aren't aware, teachers and school support staff (including sixth form colleges) have been added to the list of people eligible for a Blue Light card. If you pay £4.99, you get two years of discounts at multiple places.

https://teachers.bluelightcard.co.uk

Because teachers love a bargain there's currently over an hour waiting time to sign up, but it was only announced yesterday so will hopefully calm down soon.

It feels nice to be recognised as essential community workers!

well, it was a fairly light hearted comment, but actually, yes they often are.

Blue Light is a misnomer surely. It was opened to Care staff by extension after their response to the pandemic.

Teachers and their quarter of a year paid leave? Not so sure about the blue light nature of that.

O yes please! Please tell me where I can sign up for this quarter year paid leave!

foster carers have access to the BLC scheme too

Why are they including dentists?! And Home Office and MoD staff, but not other civil servants?!

Community care staff get them too even though many they work for private companies rather than the council. It's a brilliant card to have with loads of discounts both in store and online.

That’s fantastic! Btw how do you know about this? I’m wondering what else I’m missing out. I don’t use social media as my last school was against it so never got into it really. Does all this info get published on social medias? Or how else do you find out?

The amount of child protection work that schools do is insane. We're part of the front line there.

Yes, Mr P dropped his video and the website immediately crashed!

Not sure how Mr P found out. I think he met Bridget Philipson recently so he clearly now has friends in high places!

No they're not. They don't pontentially put their life on the line every time they go to work.

Like dentists and optometrists?

Cue the 'What about us?' brigade and the 'but teachers aren't blue light workers and they get all those holidays' brigade.
Oh wait, it's already started.
Reminds me of the COVID days.

On a serious note, this is a real morale booster for a profession that is on its knees.

This may have already been said, I haven’t read all the posts, but teachers can already get discounts in some shops by showing their work id , DD is a teacher and , when she remembers, had received discount in some clothing chains by doing this

I'm a retired NHS medical secretary and I've had one for two years. I think the discounts will decrease as more people are eligible.

Your school doesn't control your internet usage, why would that be a barrier to using SM?

Any way you've found about it here so there's your answer and it's on some news websites

I think you may need to look at your maths, a full time teacher will receive 28 days of holiday pay plus bank holidays. That does not add up to three months.

Quarter of a years holidays?!!?
This again! It really does get boring as well as the general hatred of teachers on here and in society in general. We get 30 days paid holiday, the rest of it is unpaid, each month a part of our salary is sacrificed to give us a July wage. We also can’t have any little cheeky weekends off or the odd day off as annual leave. We have to have school holidays which as everyone knows are very expensive.

I return to school officially next week but have spent much of this week in my new classroom, cleaning floors, scrubbing chairs and tables, cleaning cupboards etc, as well as bringing all the cushions and blankets home to wash. Deep cleans during the holidays are a thing of the past. I’ve also spent about £200 probably more in resources as the council is so cash strapped we get the bare minimum.

When I am back in school there’s a good chance I’ll have the hair ripped out my head, be kicked, scratched and bitten, as in previous years. Oh and the 60+ hour weeks working every night and Sundays.

And yet all anyone goes on about is the holidays.

I was referring to the complete inability of the server to cope due to the sudden announcement, but ok

Three daughters who teach so yes, understand the pressures and the hours, but be honest, you get £38 k after 4 years , compare that to DW who is top of her scale as a nurse , been doing the job 40 years and gets £2 k less, so don’t complain, others work hard too for less money and less holidays

Bluelight is easier for NHS staff than the staff id, a very small number of places insist on the id, but as NHS staff aren’t really supposed to carry it when they aren’t working or going to/from work……