Teachers - you're 'avvin a laugh aintcha?

[mholdall]

Kids recently had a week off - half term. They were back this week then, guess what - teacher training day. Seriously, what I want to know is this: is there ANY other job in the country where you get:

• 13 paid weeks holiday a year
• Good pay
• Good pension (believe me, you do compared to people who do proper jobs in private sector - if you dont believe me, try it)
• And yet you still need these extra days to do some training. Training for what, exactly? Seriously, for what???? And how am I, as a parent, supposed to factor childcare in here.
• Oh, and you still do nothing but moan about pay, pensions etc
• Rant over

Oops, I mean 'mrscraig'. Pardon me.

HerdOfTinyElephants* - you accidentally revealed the real issue here.

'.. currently teachers' pay has been very explicitly calculated on the basis of working 195 days/year, pro rated over 12 months, and you are planning to increase that to around 227 days/year with no increase in pay, while remarking that it is "odd" that they don't like the idea.'

My proposal is you work 227 and you spread your existing workload over that amount of time so you dont work in teh evenings. Truth is as I said earlier and as working9while5 admits her mother (a senior union offical) acknowledges, the 195 day working year suits teachers just fine and is a masive perk. It is that unwillingness to work a proper year that is the entire problem.

But Herd already pointed out why that wouldn't work, have you no response to the rest of her post.

Gah. I haven't the spirit to read the entire thread. I did read the first 4 and last 2 pages....has anyone pointed out that one of the reasons teachers have the holidays they do is because the children need to have time off?

I'm a head of year at a very busy inner city school - I love my job, but by the end of term the kids are on their knees and need a break, and so do I!! INSET training is training, and therefore not holiday time - it's an irrelevant point, really. I don't debate the fact that I enjoy the holidays, and I utterly refuse to either feel guilty OR try and justify it. I'm confident that I work bloody hard and do a good job.

Many private schools have had to adapt to provide wrap around 8 am - 5.30 pm teaching and activities because they know both parents are working to cover fees. State schools will need to do the same eventually and better that teaching unions engage in the debate about how that can be done fairly.

But you pay for this as the parent of a child in private education. Or are you suggesting that parents wouldn't have to pay for any wrap-around care with your fab new idea?

They do it in state schools but it isn't the teachers. Teachers are not doing child care-they are educating.

MoreBeta - what about the parents who do not want their children to attend school for what you call a 'proper' year? I want my child to have time off and relax. My brother lives abroad and was shocked at how short the Summer holidays are here. His children go on holiday at the same time as the Scottish schools and are not back until the same time as English schools.
Also you say that most independent schools already operate similar to your proposals. Prior to moving house I looked at some private schools in my area. Every single one of them had longer holidays than the state schools.
I also want my child to be educated by a teacher not babysat. I have found the teaching in my DD and my much younger sister's schools to be far superior to mine in the 70s and 80s.

morebeta I can see how as a non-teacher your idea sounds a good one, however it is so flawed I don't even know where to start.

1, 9.00 start? Ha ha ha!!

2, what makes you think TAs' will want to do all these extra hours? Most do the job as it fits around their own child care.

3, What school do you know with the facilities to have a whole school breakfast club?!

4, What school do you know that has the resources and space to run whole school 'games' for two hours?

5, where are the teachers meant to work while the school is full of children?

6, You really think that the teachers will have two hours uninterrupted work time while the TAs' are single handily running the school?? (this is not a dig at TAs')

These are just a few issues off the top of my head...

It is that unwillingness to work a proper year that is the entire problem.

Why do you keep ignoring the reasoned responses pointing out why your idea wouldn't work?

When the kids are in school, then there is a lot of work to be done. Reports need to be written, lessons need to be planned in response to pupil progress, work needs to be marked and feedback given as soon as possible, meetings need to be held and problems acted upon straight away, misbehaviour needs to be dealt with, after-school detentions need to be supervised, revision sessions need to be held, staff need to be briefed, emails for information on students need to be responded to, phone-calls made to parents. These things cannot be contained within the 9-5 you propose, especially at the start of the year and coming up to exam times. They cannot simply be transferred from term-time evenings to the holidays when there are no kids around. Every day there are deadlines to be met and you cannot just say 'sod it, I've done my 9-5, I'm off, class 9Z will just have to go without a lesson tomorrow'.

Yet you have completely failed to acknowledge this problem and keep bleating that teachers are against it because teachers like their holidays.

Morebeta I accept that my holidays are a perk of the job . I feel no need to pretend otherwise and as I want other bright people with the right skills to come into teaching I not going to pretend that there are not perks of the job.

However my workload cannot be shifted into the holidays unless you want to tell my students that they have to wait until the holidays for me to mark their books, or that children needing social services input need to wait until December before I can attend that case conference . Teaching is long hours in short bursts.

Most independent schools have longer hours .

Single-handedly*

As far as 'hourly rates' go, let's take a teacher (ontside London) at the top of the main payscale - so at least 6 years experience. It works out at about £24 per hour for the contracted hour (about £16 for a newly qualified teacher). But remember these hous include less than 3 hours planning, prep and marking time, all the rest of which has to be done outside school hours.

I will try and be fair here, and estimate that an 'average' teacher (no such thing, I know!) does maybe an hour extra in the morning and 3 hours extra every evening for the 190 days that children are in school (another 760 hours on top of the contracted 1295). That would reduce the hourly rate to about £15 per hour.

But then most teachers do a few hours at the weekend as well. Say another 4 hours on a Sunday? For 39 weeks of the year? Add another 152 hours.
Plus a day's work for every week they're on holiday? (That's less than many teachers on this thread have said they do) so 6x13 = 78 (We're up to 2285 hours here now, or 326 7hr working days, at £13 per hour, our NQT is on £9 per hour now - but they'd actually have to work much longer than our experienced teacher to do the same work.)

So yes, holidays are good, pay isn't bad, but it's not a 'cushy' job, is it?

"Truth is as I said earlier and as working9while5 admits her mother (a senior union offical) acknowledges, the 195 day working year suits teachers just fine and is a masive perk. It is that unwillingness to work a proper year that is the entire problem."

I didn't "admit" it. I said it.

I am not a teacher but I work 195 days a year as I work solely in schools. For this perk, I receive .8 of an NHS Band 7 salary while my teaching colleagues receive a greater full time equivalent wage than I do for working that much less.

Surprisingly, like most other employees working in the UK teaching and non-teaching alike, I would also find it hard to work a strict 9-5 day. Most people work beyond their hours, it is the way the world of work is structured and is not constrained to teachers. We all have demands etc that won't wait beyond the end of the day and many of us have child protection issues we must deal with too. I have a legal requirement to do certain documentation every day, for example and I could be struck off for non-compliance. I have plans, levelling, monitoring etc and as I deliver an NVQ3 level course, I also have marking. The job is not the same, no, and there are pressures that teachers have that I don't and vice versa but I truly, hand on heart, don't understand some teachers arguments that the holidays are necessary and/or "unpaid" based on the salaries of teachers. I don't believe that teachers work, as important as it truly is, requires more than 20% renumeration than other client-facing public sector workers with equivalent training, qualifications and experience.

noblegiraffe is completely correct. To some extent, I agree that our holidays seem long. (NOT stealth boasting) but I have a house in France and manage to spend seven weeks a year there (cheaply bought & done up gradually by our graft & the fact my husband is a multi-skilled engineer) BUT I believe that, after 21 years of teaching experience, I earn my good salary because I:

• teach three subjects from Year 7 - A-level
• am Head of Faculty with a team of 10 including training performance management (a nightmare in education), PGCE students, GTPs etc., with sole responsibility for the organisation, monitoring & outcomes against challenging targets in three subjects, two of them core & one a popular option for lower-ability students
• run my Faculty on a VERY constrained budget which has been cut by 10% this year due to Govt cuts
• have a vertical form group which includes five nationalities
• run the Risk Assessment & Offsite Visits system for the whole school
• organise a busy programme of International Activities including funded visits & exchanges to and from 7 countries
• am a Staff Governor involving long and important evening meetings BECAUSE I CARE

in fact, stick a broom up my *e ...

I do a 70 - 80 hour week in term time, and usually work at least two weeks of the holidays.

It would take three people to replace me, to learn the skills I have gradually built up, including teaching two MFL up to A-level.

The rate at which I have to work during those term-time hours is VERY pressured.

I know ppl in industry work under even more pressure, have targets & less job security, and understand people who think our holidays are too long.

The issue, I feel, is that our output is only measured in exam. outcomes and the huge amount of difference we make to childrens' lives is not quanitifable, with the rapidly-increasing social problems in this f*d up UK society (not least caused by misguided MC parents whose pressurised kids are much worse to deal with than the WC ones)

End of rant, off to continue my marking ... :(

morebeta I would really like to hear your solutions to the issue that has been raised a number of times regarding what happens with the work that doesn't slot into the 9-5 timetable. Which of my tasks would you prefer me to do in the holidays? Would you be OK with your DC's work only being marked once every 6 weeks? Or have reports sent out in holidays? Teaching inevitably involves dealing with issues RIGHT NOW.

Also, if you want me to work for 227 days rather than 195, will I get paid more? BTW, rofl at the thought that I could maybe reduce my teaching hours to compensate for the fact that I am a drama teacher who is running a school play. I might take that one to my HT and see what she makes of it.

Was just beginning an annihilation of morebeta's ridiculous suggestion when I realised you know what? Can't be arsed.

HAven't read the whole and am very much undecided about the whole issue but my question is why do teachers think they're entitled to more holiday, more pay and more perks than other workers. Most people who earn the average teachers salary also work exceptionally hard, do extra hours and generally are 'exhausted' at the end of the day but only get around 35 days holiday a year. I will probably be screamed at for this but it's true, isn't it ?????

MoreBeta, are you suggesting that ee work inefficiently simply to be seen to be working? That your children get less effective and timely feedback because I can't fit in marking their work until the holidays, because it will make you feel less annoyed about somebody having a long holiday? It seems a very strange argument really.

What would of course happen is that I would continue to mark late into the night, so that your children make the progress that we all want them to. And I would have to work in my holidays too. Not at home, as I do, but in the school building. Just to make you feel less annoyed?

In summary, teachers are good. Teacher bashing is usually based on ignorance.

And I didn't encourage them post stuff you had to delete MNHQ, honest. A big girl did it and ran away.

Yes madonna I think that covers it. Except for no more pay. We are morebeta's employees after all.

norriscole perhaps you should read the whole thread then. Because I don't recall any of the teachers on here claiming an entitlement to long holidays and more pay.

norris I work 40 weeks x 80 + hours per week in term time + at least two weeks of (usually the Summer) holidays = over 3200 hours per year using 21 years' worth of skills.

I cannot go to the toilet when I need to.

Being late is not an option.

Every time I open my mouth I can be complained about; we are rarely prasied compared to the criticism.

It's risky being 1:1 with any child, however distressed they are or how important their privacy is ...

Our pension scheme seems generous because, do you know what, we don't live as long as ppl from other professions according to the actuaries' stats ...

Go figure ?

norris If you HAD read the whole thread, you would find no evidence on here of teachers claiming they ARE entitled to MORE of anything. Except perhaps respect.

In your job, do you have to deal with the assumption that you hardly do anything? That's what is winding teachers up.

I started teaching in 1997 and have always found that everyone has an opinion because everyone went to school and therefore everyone knows how to teach I am currently on a train. I have been on many trains. Doesn't mean I think I know how to drive one.

Ignorance and twatbadgery, I think you'll find, MildlyNarkyPuffin.

Morebeta has had these conversations many, many times before. He always raises the same point and ignores the reasoned responses.

He is narky because the private school his ds went to taught Maths at the same level to the whole class using a textbook.

I would be narky if I'd paid literally thousands for that kind of twatbadgery teaching. But I'm not sure I would use it as an excuse to bash all teachers foreverafter, Morebeta.