to be pissed off that schools are off AGAIN!?

[tallulahxhunny]

after being off almost the whole month of april then the bank holiday and the voting day for some schools, and knowing that they finish for 7 weeks soon, why are they going to be off the friday before and the tuesday after the bank holiday at end of may? ffs at this rate i'd be better off home tutoring!!

Its not that i dont want to spend time with my children but i have had to fight all year for them to notice my child cant read (7) and now they have eventually took notice shes been off school longer than she has been in there! its bloody ridiculous (insert seriously angry face with much feet stamping)

" I'm wedded to the idea of the training happening on one of the 70ish days when children aren't in school and it's not a weekend. "

But this is what happened. The INSET days - which by the way are for training no idea why you think some might not be - are 5 days which were already part of the childre's hlidays. Teachers had a week's holiday taken in order to accomodate the new traiing days.

I am not sure how to make this clearer to you so that you realise that what you think should be happening already is happening - just that those 5 days are now flexible to accomodate the individal school's training needs rather than being tagged onto the school holiday.

Summer holidays when I was at school were about 7 weeks long. They are now 6 weeks.

Plus to add to Hullys post educational matters/new systems/safeguarding updates etc etc do not wait for July! These things are presented to schools throughout the year so we as teachers need to be up to date THEN not several months down the line!

clam, it feels like you are wilfully missing the point. Some INSET days happen in the middle of term-time. This is a great big hairy pain in the arse for parents and pupils. The fact that the start and end of term have moved further apart to accomodate the Inset day and that this therefore means the pupil gets the same number of days at school over the course of the year as a whole does not make this less of a pain in the arse.

As I said in the last post, if the Inset days were in July or August, it would be no big deal. If the Inset days were at the beginning or end of a term, so that term-time was one contiguous block, it would be no big deal. But where this is not the case, and the Inset day is in the middle of term-time, it is a big deal.

Hulababy, I'm not sure how what you say relates to what I was arguing: I'm not suggesting teachers give up another week of holiday (ie go from 13 to 12), just that Inset days happen outside term-time (ie the current six weeks of contiguous summer holiday may become broken up by days of training). To draw yours and Clam's points together, Inset days currently frequently mean parents have to take a day off work (of which they will typically have far fewer than teachers).

Unless Inset days happen at the start or end of term, some large block of time must be broken up by them one way or another (or at least that's the case for as long as we shut the entire school down, which does strike me as faintly barking). It could be term-time or holidays. Term-time inconveniences parents. Holidays would presumably inconvenience teachers (although not very much, given that they don't have to arrange cover with their employers by definition!). At the moment it's parents who are inconvenienced. And I don't see why.

And actually, I would say that the professional challenges faced by teachers and lawyers are totally different. Teachers have classes of children in front of them all day, every day, with hardly any flexibility at all for the whole of the school year. We're not just being awkward, you know.
The only solution would be to take 5 days from teac....Oh! Wait a minute!
They already have.

For every parent on here wanting all Inset days tacked on to holidays (as opposed to just most of them), there'll be one who prefers them randomly scattered throughout the year.
There's no pleasing everyone. And to be frank, the primary concern is answering the training needs of the staff, not some of the parents.

I personally would love one chunk of training over and done with but as my previous post (sadly ignored thus far) states educational matters don't wait for the summer holidays.

Eh? As you say, "hardly any flexibility at all for the whole of the school year" [my emphasis]. They have quite a lot of flexibility for the whole of the rest of the year.

Some lawyers do indeed have a bit more flexibility, but for the whole of their working year - which is about 6 weeks longer than the teachers' working year.

GPs don't have that flexibility at all. Their patients never go away. So they use temporary cover for when they do their CPD and they take it in turns to do their CPD so the practice stays open, a bit like supply teachers could cover teachers when they do their training and the school could stay open...Oh! Wait a minute! That doesn't happen.

OP: unless you are much older than me (and with a kid in P2, I doubt it ), then the holidays you got - even at primary school were a week in October (they introduced the October Week when I was in primary school), c.2 weeks at Christmas, c.10 days at Easter, assorted long weekends and a slightly longer summer holiday.

My mum was a teacher and one of her bugbears was that English teachers didn't have as many teaching days as Scottish teachers.

As others have said, the INSET days have come out of the teachers' holidays.

You can see all the holidays, including the Inset days, for the following school year on your council web-site (Glasgow has had its dates up for ages)

Re your dd not being able to read: it is frustrating, but my ds wasn't reading during P1 (I kept on telling them that he wasn't "blending" - he was just learning the stories off by heart) - but they said that some kids just aren't ready developmentally until that are 6. As it was, he was 6.75 before he finally "got" it (that, despite 6 weeks extra 1:1 tuition at the beginning on P2 from the depute). But at 10 (P6) he is now free reading, back in the top group for language (since end of P4) - so sometimes it is just a matter of time.

I also happen to know that the teachers are equally frustrated by the fragmented April - but the May Weekend, together with the INSET days, is not a new thing.

That's right, to give children continuity and to "shock horror" save the LA some money we do training in our holidays instead just not in one lump.

Hulababy, I'm not sure how what you say relates to what I was arguing: I'm not suggesting teachers give up another week of holiday (ie go from 13 to 12), just that Inset days happen outside term-time (ie the current six weeks of contiguous summer holiday may become broken up by days of training).

I am not sure what you mean.

Do you mean you want summer holidays to return to 7 weeks with the 5 days INSET during that time? Like they used to be?

Or do you want teachers to use the 6 week's holiday for training (i.e. lose another 5 days holiday?) and for INSET to go altogether?

Or??? It is not clear.

To draw yours and Clam's points together, Inset days currently frequently mean parents have to take a day off work (of which they will typically have far fewer than teachers).

This is irrelelvaent. When ou chose to have a child you know the child will need caring for. School is not childcare. Teachers who are parents also have to deal with INSET for their own children, who generally are at a different school with different INSET. Teachers have no flexibility to tae these days off for their cildren. They just have to manage.

Holidays would presumably inconvenience teachers (although not very much, given that they don't have to arrange cover with their employers by definition!).

Well yes - the whole doing the training for free is an issue for one.

Do you do training in your holiday allowance too?

Also, many teachers have children. They have their own children to look after in the holidays too.

Sigh...

1. Educational matters may not wait for the school holidays, but educational matters that are so urgent that they require shutting the whole school down for training for a day at a time?! Really?! What on earth could they be? Hospitals don't shut down for training the day some new urgent life-or-death NICE / NPSA guidance is released

2. There are other alternatives to tacking on Inset days on the start/end of holidays or scattering them through the year. Such as

• not shutting the whole school down
• running them in July or August or mid-December

3. To be frank, the primary concern is providing an excellent education for pupils. The training needs of the staff are simply a means to an end. If the training interrupts the provision of the education to the extent that it is disruptive, how it's organised needs to be re-looked at. I'd argue shutting a school down for a day in the middle of a term is likely to be pretty disruptive to pupils' education.

So, can I clarify....

You would prefer schools to have either a 7 week summer holiday or a 3 week Christmas holiday? And within the extra week on one of those holidays, teachers should do the INSET then?

It does seem like the kids have hardly been at school in the last 6 weeks!!

Fine - we can run the INSET days in August, as you suggest, slhilly.

Now, when would you like me to have my extra week off, in lieu of training in the school holidays? Obviously it should be at a time which doesn't inconvenience you, of course.

Slhilly, why don't you retrain as a teacher and then you will have the same holidays as your children (as long as they go to the same school)? This may also give you a better understanding of INSET days and the profession as a whole. It may possibly also mean that your attitude towards the profession would be a little nicer.

It may also make you realise why it would be a really really bad idea to try and run a school using only cover teachers for a day. Especially at a secondary where you would have to cover over 100 teachers.

sigh indeed.
Can't be bothered with this anymore.
If what you suggest, slhilly, was such a clever and workable idea, why has it not been adopted? Oh, because IT WOULD NOT WORK.
You're seriously suggesting shipping in a whole load of supply teachers to cover large proportions of a school and think there wouldn't be bedlam? If you could even get sufficient numbers. The last INSET we had involved a visiting speaker, 3 local schools, 40 class teachers.
Anyway, I'm off. Have planning to do that won't wait 'til August.

Nice to see you, feenie! Was wondering about putting out an SOS for you!

"If the training interrupts the provision of the education to the extent that it is disruptive."
You mean, disruptive to your childcare arrangements, I think.

Really? Have been posting a bit! Or do you mean just on this thread? Nice to be missed though

I meant on this thread.

Does anyone remember the snow day teacher bashing thread of 2009? That was a fun one, managed to go to 500 posts, I'm pretty sure half of those were explaining how INSET days DO NOT come out of the students taught days.

I'm surprised nobody suggested the snow days were taken in the middle of August!

I do enjoy a good teacher bashing thread, makes me feel all warm and fuzzy and glad to be in debt to the government for my training.