To think the long school holidays are not for the teachers' benefit?

[NotInMyDay]

Discussion on BBC Breakfast this morning re long school holidays. A rep from teachers' union was saying the long school holidays were vital for teachers to rest and recuperate so that they could do the best for our children at the start of the next school year.

AIBU to think that it's the children who need this break and therefore the teachers have it too? Rather than NEEDED by the teachers.

I think that most teachers do a fantastic and unenviable job but they don't need to recuperate any more than GPs, surgeons, nurses, bus drivers etc.

Whoever posted about the way that teachers work for short bursts is right

yes, that was me. Though according to Noble ( who talks as if she is teacher but probably isn't as she won't confirm she is) Feenie, and ATIYL, the only people allowed to have any real opinions on this are people who are teaching, have taught in the last 5 years, etc etc.

And whoever extrapolated that i hate teachers is wrong. Lots of my friends are teachers. what I did say was that there is a lot of moaning in staff rooms and a focus on the next holidays.

As a parent, I feel that holidays are too long and so does every other parent I know.

Amelia, maybe you should campaign to help the poor kids in the private system who get EVEN LONGER holidays. If shorter holidays are beneficial for children then surely they should be adopted across all educational settings.

Katie it depends on the subject. I taught English- in the days when pupils read whole novels and entire Shakespeare plays- not just extracts or single speeches- and the syllabus changed from year to year. I would spend my summer holidays reading up so I could teach whatever it was- my A level class alone studied 8 texts- and there was no way I could easibly be expected to have read them all even after doing a degree.

Alistron- actually no. because kids in private schools often work Saturdays and they have much longer school days. Didn't you know that?

I don't mention to my family when I see them that I have been working long hours, that would be a rather dull conversation!

Due to exam board and syllabus changes the planning is constantly being changed. I spend more time marking than planning at the moment as most of my schemes of work are on at least a second run through. However when you mark that then feeds into your planning so it is not the case that you run the same lessons each year. Also because we teach years 7- 13 we are in a rolling programme of writing schemes of work. If I only updated one year groups schemes of work a year that would mean they only got new lessons every 7 or 8 years and many of us teach subjects which require links to latest ideas or current affairs.

To suggest that lessons can be repeated year on year is ridiculous- unless this year's class is exactly the same as last year's in terms of ability, SEN, EAL needs etc etc then I would be doing a very poor job to just roll out last year's lessons. And that's before syllabus changes, necessary whole-school focuses and the rest of it. How many parents would be happy with a "one size fits all" approach? None that I know of.

Okay since teachers work such long hours and often work for a ood portion of the holidays wouldn't it be more realistic to reconise this and say that teachers only have say 8 weeks holiday and the other 5 weeks the school is closed they are working? This would recognise the work teh teachers are saying they already do, andreduce the complaints about the long holidays?

Amelia, my 3 nieces at a private secondary school have the same length school day as my own secondary school children and do not go to classes on saturday mornings.

But zombie, that would only work if pay was increased/extra hours recognised.

My DP has been into work today, he has prep. to do over the next 2 weeks and will need to go into school again to sort various issues out.

*Alistron- it varies a lot. If the school also does boarding then the day is often longer.

Just leave the long Summer Holidays alone. Or make them 5 weeks and have two weeks May/June half term.

But please "every rude word under the sun" don't have longer Oct and Feb holidays.

All the DC do is compute, watch CBBC and get on my nerves.

Late nice Easters are bearable I can say bikes, trampoline etc. but Feb half terms too late for snow and Oct half term is always grim.

Because the weather is very marginal every indoor attraction is ridiculously busy. London is a joke. If we must bugger about with the holidays let's make Feb and October long weekends and have the week before Xmas when the DC do nothing any way.

I do not work a good proportion of the holidays. This Easter holiday I am planning to do 2- 3 days from 9am until 3pm. Holidays are for families, I think my school gets their fair share of me in term time, I will not sacrifice family time.

Teaching is regarded as a vocation.

Pay has always been low because many teachers are women and it is a 2nd income for many families. Might be an outrageous thing to point out but is true- it's a women-dominated profession.

And until there is a huge shortage of teachers, the pay will not increase.

Pay nowadays is hugely better than it used to be and there are far more opportunites to progress and earn more- advanced teacher status being just one of them.

I totally agree that the holidays are a perk of the job. For me they are also a necessity but that is not true for all teachers.

Usually teachers have to be at the top of their game from the word go (otherwise classes pounce) so by the end of the term my dept have that punch-drunk feeling. I do have friends who work similarly long hours, with responsibility for depts of people and massive amounts of money but they earn multiples of my salary which practically means they can pay for help, particularly on the domestic front, and get other perks like private health care, bonuses, cars.

I've been teaching since the mid 90s and it certainly has got more demanding in that time . Even the marking has got more complex as there are numerous different mark schemes to apply, own mark book to fill in, then a tracking sheet and then data crunching on how this measures up to targets and then an action plan - for one piece of work - and at GCSE and Alevel is more time consuming than KS3. As I have young children, I work an hour or two of prep in the evening and then get up at 4am and mark two or three times a week as otherwise I can't keep pace. I'll also do a 4 or 5 hours at the weekend. Massively heavy mark-load my subject.

If teacher holidays were reduced, I would look forward to the commensurate increase in my salary - before sodding off for a life less stressful.

I feel that teaching is my vocation as in , it is a job that makes a difference and my primary motivation is not money. I have never thought I need to go to work today as I may not get paid or that I need a promotion so I can buy a bigger house .

However I want my labour recognised by a fair pay check and decent working conditions . Too often a vocation means we can take the piss and make you feel bad if you don't agree by saying " think of the children "

I'm a teacher and I love the long holidays. I loved them when I was a stay at home mum, and I love, love, LOVED them when I was a child. Lots of people on here object to teachers moaning about how hard they work. It's ironic really, because this is essentially a forum for moaning. It is the place lots of us come to, specifically for a grumble. If you're on here, you're probably moaning. Annyhoo, if you want the long hols, come and be a teacher yourself. You'll absolutely love it.

You should not be asked to record a piece of data more than once. I use the school data tracking system to record key assessments for key stage four which I can then copy and paste elsewhere but I would not manually write them into a mark book.

Nicehamisone, yes, that is the theory..so I've heard! We assess in levels at KS3, bands in KS4 for the exam board which we then converted to grades for the whole school tracking system - all then entered into Ofsted grids against pupil performance data so progress is seen to be tracked and acted upon.

Nicehamisone, yes, that is the theory..so I've heard! We assess in levels at KS3, bands in KS4 for the exam board which we then converted to grades for the whole school tracking system - all then entered into Ofsted grids against pupil performance data so progress is seen to be tracked and acted upon.

"Katie it depends on the subject. I taught English- in the days when pupils read whole novels and entire Shakespeare plays- not just extracts or single speeches- and the syllabus changed from year to year. I would spend my summer holidays reading up so I could teach whatever it was- my A level class alone studied 8 texts- and there was no way I could easibly be expected to have read them all even after doing a degree."

I am quite shocked by this - pupils don't read full novels or plays any more? For A Level? I did mine in 2002 we did Hamlet, Emma, Howard's End, Whitsun Weddings and Streetcar Named Desire. Not doing so would be crap preparation for a degree. Also the syllabus changing from year to wouldn't fit with my experience either, my cousin did A Level English 20 years before me and lent me her annotated copy of Emma!

Sorry, NiceHamione!

Katie- yes, they do read full texts for A Level English. In my school the yr 13s have done Wuthering Heights, Othello, A Streercar Named Desire and a modern novel (not my subject so can't remember) What I found more incredulous about amelia's post was her assertion that she had to read the texts herself and that was lots of work. I'm not teaching yr13 English but I've read their texts... Apparently this was to prove that teachers in the 70s had as much to do as they do now. My parents both taught, and I qualified in 1997. I have seen massive changes since then, and both my parents say the job is very different now. Dad is still involved as a governor in 2 schools, so is in a good position to comment.

Pay has always been low because many teachers are women and it is a 2nd income for many families. Might be an outrageous thing to point out but is true- it's a women-dominated profession

Oh god can we nail that myth too?

Pay for teachers isn't low, it is competitive with other professions that need a comparable level of training to undertake them, such as Social Work and Nursing. Admittedly you won't get filthy rich doing it, but an NQT's starting salary is more than decent for an entry level job and Senior Management positions in Secondary schools can command a very tidy wedge.

Yes, it is poor compared to say, a Doctor's pay, but then they invest many more years in training and the entry requirements for medical school are far higher.

katie I was meaning GCSE when I said that they don't need to read the whole novel and the exam only asks them about a few specific chapters or a single speech in a play.