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

As a fundraiser, I know exactly what it is like to have everyone think they can do your job, thanks! I am directly and solely responsible for raising in excess of £250k a year - if I were generating that in sales for a commercial business no doubt I would be paid more than I am - and I have a pension worth about 2p. I work in a sector which is being thoroughly shafted by the Government, who want charities to become service providers, reliant on Govt contracts - meaning that they set the agenda on what work is done, irrespective of whether it is needed, and pushes charities into serious mission drift in order to stay afloat. I also have to read endless threads on MN about how fundraising is begging, how they "don't agree" with comic relief, how charities should never have to ask for money, how they spend too much on admin and fundraisers - whilst seemingly oblivious to the fact that the third sector does everything no-one else will and which statutory bodies don't give a fuck about. But do you know what? That's fine. I chose my job, and I love it. Teachers also chose their job. It is an incredibly important one, yes, but so are lots of jobs.

I have said repeatedly. MoreBeta that I - and many other teachers I know - are in favour of shorter summer holidays. Are you sticking your fingers in your ears and going 'la, la, la not listening' ?!

At the risk of sounding like a complete fence-sitter, one thing that's occurred to me since I made my original posts was that an extended school day and shorter holidays may not end up helping working parents that much anyway.

We live in a society that is becoming increasingly shift dominated. 9-5 jobs are disappearing in many, many sectors as customers/consumers demand 24/7 access.

On reflection, I think the only real solution to this is much better child care provision - open on weekends (non-existent where I live), available before 8am and after 6pm (again, non-existent in my area). There is definitely a case to be made for some funding to be directly targetted at schools for this. My school's wrap-around care is not open during half-terms or on INSET days for example - some of the times they're most needed.

Maybe if the OP had the option of taking her DC to school on that INSET day and dropping them at the after-school club rather than at their classroom, her rant could have been avoided.

She should be writing to her MP though, not attacking teachers who are powerless in all this.

"The replies on this thread show teachers will never agree to change it."

because it is unworkable.

Well done, Pumpkinbones. I too was a fundraiser before I was a teacher. I know what you mean.

I don't get the point, though. Where has anyone said anything different? Your post gives the hard realities of your work as a fundraiser and the negative opinions people have of you despite the important work you do.

That is exactly the same as what we have been doing in response to what people have been saying about us and our 'easy' jobs.

Read our posts. We all love our jobs.

But it wouldn't be best in terms of teaching Betadad. It's presenteeism to make other people with a difficult juggling act feel better. I don't think that is a sound reason for change.

Life - I think that is the problem, that we all love our jobs. It seems to be diffcult for many to understand, that killing though it is, we wouldn't do anything else, irrelevant to the holidays.

I think it's usually a touch of the green-eyed monster.

It's so much more gratifying to remember the great moments & achievements than to count beans all day & call yourself a Chartered Accountant, or be a b*stard & recommend redundancies in a struggling company isn't it ?

Teachers are paid for 1265 hours per year, if morebeta's idea were put in place for 9-5 227 days of the year

where would the other 551 hours pay come from?

and why should teachers at that point still not get paid for their holidays?

I do not work a great deal in the holidays and neither do most of the teachers that I know.

I know many teachers who do want the holidays shortened but I don't. I think they are a huge selling point for attracting some of the best graduates . We could say, yes you will warn less than you may in other professions but you have time every summer for an adventure .

I will not apologise for the perks of my job , I want to celebrate and share them so the best people will enter this very rewarding profession.

Basically, everyone thinks the grass is greener. I would love to be one of the women I see at my my gym on one of my 35 days a year off work who can play tennis and sit and drink coffee in the bar afterwards talking about their holidays in the Maldives...I would quite like to have more than my allocated holiday....I would like to be able to spend more time with my children in a postive way, not being so tired that I sometimes stick them in front of the telly...I would like to home educate...lots of things. But, we do generally all have things to pay for and stresses and strains and life to deal with. What can't we all appreciate what we all do. This country is sinking and we will all be in shit street soon. Live and let live eh?

I would agree to a longer working day and shorter holidays; for at least double the pay but most teachers would rather have a life. On my PGCE I was going to bed at 2 am and getting up at 6am such was my workload.

exactly, Norris.

I don't think the grass is greener - I know it is lush on my side of the fence, but I still (and I sound like a stuck record now) will not agree that my job is easier than other people's.

Once again - I love my job - but that doesn't mean I have to put up with people telling me I don't work hard.

Have only skimmed the thread, but yes, there is a better job.

As a teacher at a college (term time only) I get 16 weeks off a year.

But in all seriousness, if you think it's that fab (and I'm not saying it's not) retrain and get a teaching job.

A few points!

1 Why do people feel they can come on and attack any profession when they've not done it themselves?

What would you say if i said nurses have it cushy, swanning around taking temperatures and chatting to patients? I'd be flamed and rightly so as i have no idea what it is like to be a nurse.

2 I loved teaching, but it took over my life. I gave up when I had my 3 kids as I felt either my family would suffer or my job or kids at school would suffer if i did both. If it was 9-5 with 4 weeks holiday I'd be back like a shot!! But it's not.

3 Don't slag people off for the terms and conditions of their job, that they didn't create. I don't moan about travel agents of cabin crew getting cheap flights as part of their job just a wee bit jealous

I wouldn't say it about anyone else - I would never presume to tell anyone else how to do their job or claim that they have an easy life. Why should I have to shrug it off when people say it about me?

norris agree wholeheartedly with your observation about the state of the country.

The state of the UK, in all respects, leads to the type of grass-is-greener resentment displayed here.

Sad that we can't all respect each other more, including older people respecting children & young people + those who work with them :(

And as for previous posters who said their teacher friends do no work in the holidays....perhpas they don't but i bet they make up for it the rest of the year. You can't do the job any other way.

I used to work my backside off even more so the week before every half term...just so that i could have a proper holiday and take the week off. Summer was different - few weeks off, then planning for september, then mad busy when the gcse and a levels came out. Certainly not 6 weeks of swanning around being a lady of leisure!! Easter hols and may half term - in school doing revision classes etc...

I think that most school staff would love to get paid for longer hours/more weeks a year. At the moment schools operate on a hell of a lot of free goodwill. I'm also sure that most school staff would love not to have to work when they get home in the evening/at the weekends/in the holidays and actually have some sort of work/life balance.

I am tittering at the notion that people who work in schools have no idea about the harsh realities of life. Obviously dealing with serious behavioural issues, being assaulted, dealing with CP issues etc is not 'reality' ... I'm sure that in my past life (contact centre work) I was dealing with the harsh realities of life from my desk/behind my keyboard.

And Beta, no school buildings are completely shut down over the holidays. Office and cleaning staff are still contracted to work and HAVE to be on site. Naturally the school will not be lit up like a christmas tree in order to save costs. Unless you live incredibly close to an extraordinarily small school and monitor comings and goings all day throughout all the holidays I think it's unlikely that you can assert who is/isn't in the building. And if you are spending all day monitoring the situation then you either need a more interesting job (maybe teaching?) or to get out more.

Time spent working at the weekend equates to about 4 weeks each year. (3-4 hours on a Sunday * 39 weeks)

Cue someone to bring up ppa time.....so, to justify.......

The marking process has become complex over the last few years (AFL, marking to objective, close the gap) and children are required to be proactive.

Even if I complete next week's planning in ppa time (difficult, as maths has to be assessed daily), I still have maths and literacy books to mark over the weekend. This takes ages. I generally mark the maths before leaving school on Friday evening, and finish the literacy over the weekend. This marking can take at least 3 hours. As children are required to respond to my marking, it has to be done by Monday otherwise they forget they've been doing.

This weekend working is my biggest bugbear about the job, and I can't see a solution. Maybe, one day, someone will pull the plug on this obsessional target tracking from cradle to dole queue.

I loved teaching, but it took over my life. I gave up when I had my 3 kids as I felt either my family would suffer or my job or kids at school would suffer if i did both. If it was 9-5 with 4 weeks holiday I'd be back like a shot!! But it's not

My feeling entirely.

Most people went to school, most parents send their DCs to school so they all feel they know what the job entails. They obviously don't-you can tell from their expectations on other threads. e.g. expecting their DC to start a class in September and them instantly be put on the correct reading book-despite the fact they have had 5 weeks since the last one in another class.

Weirdly parents think it is better to have one full time teacher ,who is utterly shattered than 2 part time teachers who come in fresh and have time for a life. I think that you will get more and more job shares and teaching will no longer be a lifetime career, people will come and go either doing something else first or going on to other things. I think it is all to the good.

I think my kids' teachers do, on the whole a great and incredibly hard job, and are pretty underpaid.

I teach adults (and currently some 16-18 year olds too, in an FE college) and get none of the perks eg paid holidays, pensions etc (I work on a hourly paid contract basis) but would not deny that full-time school teachers absolutely earn their pay and perks, and more.

As a teacher of much older ones, I have to be on my feet for the whole lesson, it is intellectually and emotionally very demanding, I cannot go to the toilet or have anything to eat/drink when required, and every hour of teaching requires another hour of admin, preparation and marking. Compared to teaching ANY office job is a walk in the park - there is no office job where you literally cannot get the time to go to the loo, or have a cup of tea at your desk or whatever. I've worked as a cleaner, shop assistant, barmaid - all require you to be on your feet, yes, but have zero responsibility/stress and zero work taken home. You are paid for all the hours you work.

It's interesting that all those knocking teaching and saying it's overpaid have never actually done the job, or anything equivalent. I have very similar experience and did consider retraining to be a primary/secondary teacher, but decided against it, because I knew, on the basis of my own teaching of adults and of helping in my kids' school, that it would be far, far, far too hard work for the money (long holidays or not).

My DH used to think that teaching (my career) sounded like such a great deal. He used to be in banking, and made 5 times what I made. He then decided, as it all sounded so good, to give it a go! He retrained and currently doing his NQT year. He has never worked harder, been more sick or more tired before - and for a lot less money than he used to make. Yet the job satisfaction is beyond anything he ever got trading commodities.
Life is about choices - if you think teachers have it easy, then become a teacher... There are a lot of us who think it's the best job in the world (though I keep saying once/when we finally manage to start a family one of us will have to stay at home or work part-time as we barely have any free time at home).