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)

The other point is that (if I have understood MNer teachers correctly) is that they don't get "paid" for the holidays: if, for whatever reason, they have to take a day's unpaid leave, they are deducted 1/teacher working days (don't know the figure - lets say 225,) instead of (which is the case for most people on "full year" contracts), 1/260.

You're right, prettybird. And if you're a supply teacher, you get paid the same daily rate as a full time teacher, but that is salary/195 days, because a supply teacher doesn't have their pay evened out across 12 months as a regular teacher does.

slhilly - not a teacher, so I can't be accused of defensiveness.

yes, I think 7 weeks of summer holiday for pupils / 6 weeks summer holiday ofr teachers + 1 week of training would be much better. It would cause massively less disruption to pupils and the vast bulk of parents.
But already on this thread there have been other parents disagreeing with you - I'm certain I've read at least one person saying she liked the five days scattered through the year rather than in one block. It also contradicts a bit with what you said when you stated you were not wedded to the idea of training in July in one go - bit confused by the two responses (unless that wasn't you in which case forgive me - I think it was and don't want to check in case I lose where I am in the answer).
while there are some types of training that I can imagine it would be good for an entire school or large chunks of a school to go on, I don't understand what is so special about teacher training vs other professional development that there is five days' worth each year that requires a school to shut down. Other organisations use cover and rolling programmes to ensure continuity of service - and no, fontsnob/clam, I was not suggesting trying to provide cover for an entire school any more than you try to provide cover for an entire hospital, law firm, architectural practice, engineering company, accountancy, etc etc. I was suggesting that the combination of cover and rolling programmes would make sense
But this doesn't change how many days schooling your kids get, surely? Except that they get a supply teacher on those days, which is surely more of an impact (because certainly when i was at school, we always felt as though those teachers weren't 'proper' teachers and we didn't have to work as hard). And the teachers don't have to take the allowance out of their holiday because with their training done in term time and the class covered, unless you double the amount of training it would no longer be necessary to do it in holiday time. And if I'm honest, I don't get the comparison with hospitals, for example. No-one is going to die if a school shuts for a day, it's just people may have to organise their own child care. Well, that was part of the bundle when I decided to have a bundle of joy. She will be in school on exactly the same number of days as she would have been with no teacher training, so I'd still have the same number of days care to organise. Part and parcel of parent hood, and I'd rather my child was being taught by someone who was up to date with all aspects of the profession.

In my experience of a business, very rarely does the whole business need to go on the same training. Each department has specific needs. I have worked for an organisation where whole departments shut down for a day to accomodate training of the department, but never a whole business because not everyone needed to know the same things. Not true of teachers - if you are doing learning theory, or child protection, you all need to know it. So you bring in an expert, and either you then pay for that expert to return repeatedly to talk to your teachers separately (while also paying for supply teachers - most schools couldn't easily afford this if you expect them to also continue to fund all the other things they need, cleaners, books, science equipment etc), or you do it in the most efficient way possible and pay for him once, while not incurring the additional costs of supply.
If you blocked your training into one week during the holidays, for example, those experts would then become almost impossible to book - there would be huge demand in that time and then none for the rest of the year. And I have been involved in a business delivering teacher training. We need to take a decent number of teachers to make it worth our while running it, but if all the schools did their training in July, each year, we would train far fewer teachers due to space restrictions. So batches of 20 or so are ideal, only possible if a school takes the day off, and different schools are staggered in when they take their inset days.

Training vs admin - don't know, but I know that 'admin' can cover a multitude of sins - getting everyone signed off on an update to a child protection policy can be classed as admin. Doesn't mean it's not vital. I think this might be where the 'walk in their shoes' bit is valid as unless you have been on a training day it is going to be hard to know what goes on. Again, in any business, rubbishing the work of other depts is easy as you don't knwo what they are doing until you've seen it for yourself. And that's in the same business working for the same goals. Much harder when you are one step removed outside that business.

bangs head on desk back I know that Inset is not taking away from curriculum time. I know it's often tacked on to holidays and that is A Good Thing. But it's not always, and that is what I'm talking about!

EvilTwin - whatever distinguishes teaching training from other industries, it's definitely not the rate of change. I work with healthcare professionals, and the new evidence and policy they are required to absorb is, honestly, orders of magnitude more than for teachers[1]. Nor is it the fact that you have to be able to move forward together. The same is true in virtually every other industry. None of this is specific to teaching, it just feels that way to you.

What I think is not that schools "should organise themselves to cause as little inconvenience to working parents as possible". What I think is that the educational experience of pupils and the convenience of working parents is significantly disrupted by having INSET days in the middle of term-time, and I don't see that the cost-benefit tradeoff of this particular solution is worthwhile, cf other solutions.

I recognise that teachers who are parents have to find cover for INSET days. But that sounds like the argument from martyrdom ("I have to suffer, so you should too"). There specific employment benefits to being a teacher that most other workers don't have, not least 70 days holiday. There are also many workers who are paid much less than teachers and so will find it more of a struggle than teachers to cover childcare costs.

[1] Lord knows how many medical articles are published in the peer-reviewed literature each day today, but even back in 1966, it was more than 400
radiology.rsna.org/content/86/5/935.extract

slhilly
Please can we keep the inset day at the end of Easter so that we can moderate all the coursework/controlled assessment tasks?

It would be very difficult to do it otherwise.

slhilly- I sort of see what you are saying in your last post, but still I think I disagree. If a new policy comes in mid-(academic) year, as might happen especially in an election year, then you may well need staff to know about it before the end of that year. Especially if it affected GCSEs for example, or A'Levels. Wouldn't you want your kids teachers to knwo about those changes fast, in case your kids results were affected? How annoyed would you be if a change in the marking system (for example) was put in place but nobody bothered to fully instruct the staff, because they waited until the summer holiday inset days to do it - after your kids had sat their exams? I have no idea how likely this is, tbf, but I think I want staff to know ASAP.
And I still think tha the educational experience of pupils is going to be just a disrupted if you offer a 'rolling' programme of Prof. Dev. as the children will end up with supply teachers instead, who have to figure out what the kids have been doing and then try and add something to that in one day. Not an ideal solution at all. Has to happen when teachers fall ill, but surely we should be planning it in to the kids schools year?

Apologies for awful typing in my last post - I think it still mostly makes sense though.

The additional cost for supply would be horrendous!

If it helps, I'm quite prepared to forgo my INSET & just have another 5 days' holiday.

[looks noble & self-sacrificing]

Not the Thorpe Park one, obviously...but apart from that...

I'm gonna have to stop and do my work in a minute.

babybythesea, thanks for a thoughtful response.

"But already on this thread there have been other parents disagreeing with you - I'm certain I've read at least one person saying she liked the five days scattered through the year rather than in one block. It also contradicts a bit with what you said when you stated you were not wedded to the idea of training in July in one go - bit confused by the two responses (unless that wasn't you in which case forgive me - I think it was and don't want to check in case I lose where I am in the answer)."
I've said it elsewhere here, but the key thing for me is that the training should not be during termtime to avoid this: Mon - school, Tue -school, Wed - no school due to Inset, Thu - school, Fri - school.
That is all. There are lots of ways of achieving this. Doing it in one block in the summer is one. Doing an extra day at the start and end of three terms is another that would provide 6 days.

"But this doesn't change how many days schooling your kids get, surely? Except that they get a supply teacher on those days, which is surely more of an impact (because certainly when i was at school, we always felt as though those teachers weren't 'proper' teachers and we didn't have to work as hard)."
I'm not trying to increase the days of schooling. I'm trying to minimise in-term disruption. Supply teachers are an imperfect solution, just as locum doctors are. I agree this is a real problem, but no solution will be just right.

"And if I'm honest, I don't get the comparison with hospitals, for example. No-one is going to die if a school shuts for a day, it's just people may have to organise their own child care. Well, that was part of the bundle when I decided to have a bundle of joy. She will be in school on exactly the same number of days as she would have been with no teacher training, so I'd still have the same number of days care to organise. Part and parcel of parent hood, and I'd rather my child was being taught by someone who was up to date with all aspects of the profession."
The number of days doesn't change, but the distribution still affects how easy it is to manage. Blocks are easier to manage than random days, for most people. Random midweek days are hardest of all to manage.

"In my experience of a business, very rarely does the whole business need to go on the same training. Each department has specific needs. I have worked for an organisation where whole departments shut down for a day to accomodate training of the department, but never a whole business because not everyone needed to know the same things. Not true of teachers - if you are doing learning theory, or child protection, you all need to know it."
Sorry, but this is just not true. People working for accountancy firms have to do compliance training - everyone, no exceptions. Many professions (lawyers, medics, management consultants etc) have to keep up with core training as well as their area of specialisation.

"If you blocked your training into one week during the holidays, for example, those experts would then become almost impossible to book - there would be huge demand in that time and then none for the rest of the year. And I have been involved in a business delivering teacher training. We need to take a decent number of teachers to make it worth our while running it, but if all the schools did their training in July, each year, we would train far fewer teachers due to space restrictions. So batches of 20 or so are ideal, only possible if a school takes the day off, and different schools are staggered in when they take their inset days."
On the other hand, work would be even more evenly distributed and the costs challenge would be mostly dealt with if the whole school didn't shut down in one go and if schools banded together to buy training in batches.

"Training vs admin - don't know, but I know that 'admin' can cover a multitude of sins - getting everyone signed off on an update to a child protection policy can be classed as admin. Doesn't mean it's not vital."
I agree it's vital. I wouldn't want it to wait for an Inset day. I'd want people to learn it through self-paced study / online / elective courses / lunchtime seminars etc. Just the same way I'd want, say, pharmaceutical company employees to sign off on new Good Manufacturing Practice updates quickly, or airline pilots to sign off on new safety updates from Boeing.

"Again, in any business, rubbishing the work of other depts is easy as you don't knwo what they are doing until you've seen it for yourself. And that's in the same business working for the same goals. Much harder when you are one step removed outside that business."
I'm not rubbishing the work. I'm saying that the current organisation of Inset days is not ideal. I've still not heard anything that persuades me that it is ideal.

Donki rest assured, I have no power to influence Inset days at all. Some people here appear to be saying I've a bloody cheek even commenting. FWIW, my suggestion of extra days at the start and end of three terms would seem to accomodate an Easter INSET day.

That's it, I'm doing work now.

Shily - Great idea to tack all the INSETs days together.

Now if only we can persuade the exam boards that we can moderate (check and enter) ALL the coursework AFTER the exams have been sat and not when the exam entries are due we'd be sound as a pound!

As a mum of 2, INSET days can be a total pain in the arse as I have to pay for my 9year old to go to the childminders and not school. Being a teacher doesn't mean we don't have the same issues as 'proper' parents.

I think NorfolkNChance has said it most beautifully and should stop banging her head on the desk as she has explained it very clearly it is just some short sighted, Daily Mail followers who seem to see all teachers as the scourge of all evil who are just on this earth to make life difficult for parents.

yes, it's true. We are hideously overpaid, have far too many holidays AND we bugger off at 3.30 every day. What a sweet ride we have.

PS - I love Thorpe Park (or any theme park). i third (or fourth) that for my next INSET.

Shilly
If the whole school didn't shut down, and staff trained in batches of 20, that would mean that (being generous and allowing for 10% non-contact time) 18 supply teachers would need booking for each batch.
That's about £200 per supply teacher per day (cost to school - the teacher gets somewhat less after the agency have taken their cut)
If the school had 100 staff, that would mean each rolling days inset costs an additional £18,000

I've said it elsewhere here, but the key thing for me is that the training should not be during termtime to avoid this: Mon - school, Tue -school, Wed - no school due to Inset, Thu - school, Fri - school.
Fair point. Not that teachers themselves have any control of this of course!

People working for accountancy firms have to do compliance training - everyone, no exceptions. Many professions (lawyers, medics, management consultants etc) have to keep up with core training as well as their area of specialisation.
Having read this, it reminded me of the business I currently work for, where it did indeed shut down for 2 whole days in January for staff training, for all 650 staff in one go! And it does every year! So I guess teaching is not the only profession to find it the most cost effective way to do this.

On the other hand, work would be even more evenly distributed and the costs challenge would be mostly dealt with if the whole school didn't shut down in one go and if schools banded together to buy training in batches.
I don't think I understand what you are getting at. If the evenly distributed work is in term time (which it would have to be to get it evenly distributed) then it has to becovered by supply, and the cost of supply then becomes a hugely inhibitive (is that even a word?) factor. So the school has to go without something else. Science kit? Textbooks? Part of our training delivery issue is that with large numbers of teachers off at once, and they would be if everyone organised their days in the same way across the year, we just then can't do that many people in one go. We don't have space, so the training then becomes limited to a select few.

I'd want people to learn it through self-paced study / online / elective courses / lunchtime seminars etc.
Except that, from what I know of schools, lunchtimes are often taken up with playground duty so no chance there - teachers have to be available if the kids are on the premises.
And evenings and weekends are used for marking, planning, writing reports, running after school clubs, organising and running school trips, organising classrooms, parents evenings etc. Some schools do do 'twilight training' on some occasions to allow teachers the flexibility not to train on an allotted holiday day (so removing the need for inset altogether), but on the whole my teacher friends don't like using up evenings as they are already used up doing work ready for the next day (and a lot of experts won't come out in the evenings). I can't think that if you have 30 essays to mark, each requiring a thoughtful analysis so the student can learn from it, (and that's just one class) that you then want to go on and do some self-paced study as well. Or that you'd be in a state of mind to remember any of it.

Have scanned this and am scratching my head.
Don't you have to find childcare whenever your child isn't at school, whether it be the 29th April or 24th August?

Teachers also have to find childcare on inset days. They have the same problem as everyone else.

I must have missed the point.

I've worked in a range of primary schools over the last 25 years. Not sure exactly when Inset days were introduced (late 80's?) but I have NEVER come across a training day set in the middle of the school week. Without exception they have all been at the beginning or end of a half term.
I acknowledge this might not be the case in 100% of schools but would bet that it applies in most cases.
Apart from our forthcoming Thorpe Park trip, of course, which we're planning to do to cause the maximum disruption.

Oh, and our doctor's surgery regulalry closes down for staff training.

Shilly, I notice that you have not been able to answer the specific issues that teachers/schools have to deal with in their day to day. Inset at the start of the school year, for example gives us time to reflect on exam results and plan for students in the light of these results.

The day we get in October is for performance management, could be tacked onto a holiday I suppose but it would have to be the start of the school year rather than the end or it would be invalid to many teachers.

After Easter (as has been mentioned) we have time to mark and moderate exam work. We have a whole school training day where staff are used to train the rest of the staff (more common now due to budget restrictions).

Believe it or not, closing departments down one at a time causes days of disruption, children don't do well with changes in their school days so rather than causing one day of disruption, it causes many. Whilst I agree that having a Wednesday in the middle of a random week is slightly nuts, there is probably a specific reason. Our school always tacks the on to holidays. IT IS NOT POSSIBLE however to cover everything all in one week due to many of the reasons i have mentioned above.

Eggsit, join the club. Few of us get slhilly's point either. The most outrageous suggestion of all is that she seriously thinks that schools spending thousands of unnecessary pounds on supply cover, even without our current budget constraints, is a viable solution. The current setup, whilst not perfect, works perfectly well enough.

And it was your passive aggressive remarks about teachers having 13 weeks off etc. that I was picking up on. Are teachers sometimes sensitive to those kind of remarks? Hell yes, because we have to put up with so much aggression and ignorance towards our profession that it gets a little tiresome at times.

Ha! Just seen the bit about lunchtime seminars!
PMSL. Fellow teachers, hands up when you last had a lunch break.

Slhilly...just re-reading, can I surmise that your only objection to INSET days is that some Schools sometimes put them on a Wednesday? Because generally we do tack them onto holidays, just not all in one go (due to many points outlined above). If that is your point then I agree wholeheartedly. Wednesday is a stupid day for INSET.

Fontsnob ...

1. your final post is spot on. My objection to INSET days is exactly as you describe. Clam assures me that it does not happen very often. The very first posts in this thread seemed to recount experiences of when it had happened.

2, what made my remarks passive aggressive? The fact that I commented at all about 13 weeks, or the specific phrasing that I used? Cos I don't see any element of passive aggression in them.

3, I'm not sure I understand your thing about "the specific issues that teachers have to deal with in their day to day" - you go on to mention some new stuff (eg Inset at the start of the year for time to reflect) which seems to assume that I think the only valid solution is an extra week in the summertime, which I have said repeatedly is not the case.

mediawhore, if the "daily mail" crack was aimed at me, it missed the mark. I think teachers get objectively better holidays than virtually every other profession (and that this is a fact, and neither good nor bad of itself) and that the evidence shows UK teachers are substantially underpaid. But that doesn't mean that I think Inset days are well organised at the moment. I wonder how other countries do this?

babybythesea, if other organisations choose to shut down for a day, that is between them and their clients. Hospitals can't do it. GP practices shouldn't except for the rarest of occasions - eggsit, I'd be complaining to the PCT and changing my GP if I were in your shoes, although tbf the risk to any individual patient of needing the surgery on a day that it's shut is relatively low, while every pupil is affected by a midweek Inset day. Commercial organisations do it and hope that the market doesn't punish them too much. But schools are different, because the relationships are long term and every (state) school does the same, so switching makes no difference.

eggsit and clam, I have been explicit about this but will say it again: ease of managing pupils' time out of school is a function of both quantity of Inset days and their distribution. I'm not suggesting a change in quantity, but am suggesting a change in distribution.

During my lunch hour today.

I checked the admin for KS2 SATs writing tasks and then locked the papers away.
Photocopied sheets for the afternoon.
Got resources out of the cupboard and set them out ready for Year 1.
Moved my laptop to the classroom I am in for the afternoon and set it all up ready to go with CD ROM and link it all up to interactive white-board.
Had a meeting about the cast list for end of term production.
Discussed with Head how various children had perfomred in this morning's SATs test.
Ate my lunch, made a cup of tea and just managed to squeeze in a visit to the loo at 2 mins to one.

As well as not having time for training during lunchtime, teachers are not paid for their lunch hours and cannot be compelled to attend meetings during this time.

I would also like to add that there are certain things we have to have training in on a regualr basis; first aid and safe guarding in particular. As the leaders of this training are outside trainers it would not be cost effective to train one or two members staff at a tiime.

our senior school has INSET days on different days throughout the year to avoid the students missing the same day's worth of lessons each time. JUnior school tends to tack them on to holidays though. Midweek INSETs are as disruptive as Friday/Monday ones tbh, as you still need to sort out childcare - and holiday clubs tend to run for just the full weeks of a holiday, and not the Monday after the October halfterm as well.