To think that INSET days are.....

[thismousebites]

basically just another day off?
So, all you teachers out there, what exactly do you do on INSET days?

Do you have a son OP ?
The last one I went to was to try to raise boy's achievement at GCSE.
The first part was looking at the differences in the way boys and girls learn. The second part was looking at lessons plans to see how we could put the theory into practice.

Teachers' directed hours increased when INSET days were introduced. So children get the same time in school, and teachers get longer. I agree that it easier to manage them when they are put by a holiday rather than randomly dotted around, but then I suppose that limits what you can do in them perhaps, with limited availability of training providers?

Honestly - a few years ago i may have been a bit on the fence about how hard teachers work/how much of the school holls is holliday time for the teachers as well/finish at 3.30 ... nice for them, etc. etc.

Then i got a job as a TA.

Teachers work bloody hard! I would not want their job. It is not a 9 till 3 easy ride.

They put in hours behind the scenes and ''out of hours'' that 90% of the parents are totally unaware of. Most of the teachers i worked alongside were arriving at school at 7am, not 9 when the kids roll in. Even those with excellent time management skills (before anyone says they should be managing their time better) were still working at school till 6pm every night, going home, seeing to their own family, and then staying up till all hours of the night during the week with piles of paperwork, marking, lesson planning etc. That is a 12+ hour working day, without traveling time.

What with all this plus the pressure of the actual job during contact time, ie: actually with the pupils - which works out as quite a surprisingly small percentage of their working day - i think we should be applauding and supporting our teachers more than we do.

My LA publishes Inset dates 2 years in advance. Plenty of notice I think!

fuckwittery The reason that so many INSET days are held at random times during the year is because of scheduling. Much training is done by outside trainers, and they can't be at every school at the beginning and end of each holiday. Days have to be booked when they can be fitted in.

At our school, we're at school for an extra week at the end of the school year after the students go home. During that time we have a number of end of year briefings, have meetings to organise the following years classes, clean out all the rooms and swap around where necessary, a whole lot of filing and paperwork, and a handful of internal training programs. Before the students come back for the start of the new school year, I've already been at school for two weeks, having meetings with the other teachers in my year, as well as meetings with specialists for certain students, perhaps training for certain pieces of equipment needed for students with special needs, we do a whole lot of planning of calendars for the year, scheduling of school functions. Oh yes, and somewhere in there we have to plan the whole curriculum with the other teachers in my year. Set up a room, prepare the first couple of weeks lessons, organise books and stationery, photocopy anything needed, get a grasp on every student in my classroom that year, determine their needs and individual learning targets and differentiate all of my lessons to account for them.

We all generally roll in around 7am and out by about 6pm for those weeks. Fitting in whole day training courses is just simply not feasible.

I don't know any teacher that actually likes these days. They're often repetitive, annoying or downright cheesy. Trust me when I say that I'd rather be in my classroom. But they are necessary.

Snow days - we did twilights to make up for them
Inset days - we have 1 at the start of autumn term every year. 6th form come in and we get their admin done. We have meetings analysing exam results. We have first aid / sen training regarding any new pupils.
Other inset days - in house training and one occasion this year where all the schools in our lea went to another huge school for gcse training as it was cheaper

Hth OP

The OP must be a Wright Stuff researcher!

I'm a TA. I do INSET days for which I am paid. I am not paid for "holidays" ,my contract is "Term -time plus 5". I get holiday pay,for holidays that I can only take in school holidays.

INSET days are usually training of some sort,either in school or elsewhere. We've been to a Local Authority training where all the teachers and TA's from all the surrounding schools attended. We've been on "Team Building" outdoor excercise-type courses (at the beginnning of January...Brrrr) and we have in-house training. Sometimes it is just planning together,and sorting out classrooms,taking down displays,re-papering the boards ready for the new term. There is always something to be done.

It annoys me intensely that people get so worked up about it.

I get annoyed on motorways with miles of cones and not a workman to be seen, but I expect someone will tell me they are doing a dangerous and necessary job and not drinking tea somewhere

I'm a parent not a teacher but last summer my dd's school was open at least three days during the summer. One was for A lvl results and the support students needed when they didn't get their grades, advising on options, doing the admin to resit a year etc the other two days are due to gcse results and the following interviews to confirm subject choices. I know teachers work hard and long hours, one friend is constantly marking, swimming lessons, gymnastic, horse riding, everywhere she goes a big pile of books goes with her in case she gets five minutes to mark.

Some interesting replies.
And, my view on this subject may be seen by some as being unreasonable, but I don't think I was being unreasonable to ask the question in the first place.

Not unreasonable to ask but there is always the underlying implication, like so many threads on here, that here are another bunch of public service workers having a jolly at the tax payers expense.
So many people think they know so much about other professionals, how they work, what their contracts are, how they could do it better. Sadly these people have no idea what goes on behind the scenes and what is worse lack the self awareness to even imagine that there may be a bigger picture.
I probably shouldn't have read this thread!

fuckwittery

I would prefer the inset days to be in the holidays for children, or always at the end or beginning of term, so working parents could plan childcare properly, and teachers should of course be paid for them. It is hard to plan for a day in the middle of term for many.

So, is the reason they are in term time, because the government made these training days compulsory, but refused to pay teachers extra? So it was a choice between closing the school, or working 5 extra unpaid days? If the INSET days are in the school term as it was before INSET was introduced (ie INSET has reduced number of days for children, but teachers work the same amount of days), surely teachers are being currently paid for them? Or have I misunderstood?

Ok, let's see if I can answer that for you. Start with the idea of putting them all next to holidays, because that makes sense for childcare etc as you say. Schools can do this sometimes, because they have someone on the staff who can organise some of the training or they are doing something which doesn't need an outside trainer. Or they got lucky and managed to get a trainer in on a date next to a holiday.
But, say they really need training on a particular subject, they find a trainer, but he's not available on the date they want, he can only manage a mid-term date. Suddenly you have a choice between not getting this essential training, or having an INSeT day mid-term. So your child is off on a random Wednesday which isn't ideal but isn't necessarily in the school's control.

However, having dictated that teachers needed these opportunities for training (the government made the training days compulsory as you stated above) it was also dictated that the children should not lose 5 days of their education. So instead, teachers lost five days of their holiday. A mid-term INSeT is added on to their education at the end of term instead (they might now break up on the Thursday instead of the Wednesday of the final week of term). So they do the same number of days of learning as they ever did. And, just to make life more fun, the government also refused to pay extra. So teachers, compared to before the days were introduced, work unpaid on five holiday days, or have five days less holiday for the same pay, or however you want to look at it. It isn't a reduced number of days for children.

And to prove the mess it's all in ... I'm a teacher, my son starts reception in September - we don't share 1 INSET day across the year so I too have to find childcare for the 5 days whilst parents at my school have to find childcare for their kids too

As a working parent, are INSET days bloody annoying and inconvenient? Yes. As a parent with children in education, am I glad that teachers are regularly updating their knowledge and skills? Double yes.

Nearly all professions have regular training days. They are a fact of life. Teachers cannot be trained while they are teaching. In an ideal world (for working parents) yes it would be good to have those training days take place in the holidays, but it's not an ideal world. The same trainers often have to cover many different schools, so they have to spread it out over the year.

Now what would be useful is if the government could fund wraparound care adequately to cover early school finishes at the end of term and INSET days etc.

This is a goady thread if ever I saw one.

OP why don't you re-train as a teacher?

I can't believe there are people who don't want the people teaching their kids to be fully trained, confident in their roles and up-to-date in their skills. It's not easy finding childcare that's true, but they are (in my area) published in advance.

My son's teachers are brilliant, hard-working, I have nothing but admiration for them and value the job they do. I could never be a teacher - their job is hard and often thankless, and made harder when government policy shifts about requiring them to be retrained halfway through an academic year. They are parents too, so any childcare issues we have, they have. Thank goodness fro well-trained teachers.

Just wait ... we are winding up to the next thread/s about teachers' holidays any day now!

inset days are the only chance we get to do things we cant to with kids about. Our school closes friday lunchtime, we actually finish next tuesday evening. We have a 6hour course in first aid on monday, tuesday morning we have a safeguarding course, tuesday afternoon we are meeting with senco to discuss the needs of the new intake. We also go back a day before the children in sept to get things ready. Most of us will also be in casual hours for the first 2 weeks of the holidays to sort out the rooms/swap classrooms/ organise our paperwork/ prepare for displays/ clean out our overflowing desks and in trays.

It really annoys me when people assume that as you work in a school you automatically have all the holidays the children have! Its not just teachers, its support staff, childcare providers, site managers, caretakers, cleaners. They all have stuff that can only be done when children arent there!

I would have thought it's obvious that inset days are important for training etc.
But it is v disruptive from a child care point of view for working parents.
Maybe the kids could still go to school but be "looked after" by a holiday club type thing.

I used to teach but left to go self employed way before inset days were introduced.

Does the stuff you learned when you were teaching enable you to walk into a classroom now and teach with no refresher trying OP? After all, you learned it before you got QTS.

I see now why your CPD costs you. I'm self employed as well as in paid employment and I have to pay for my CPD. You didn't mention being self employed before though.

You made the choice to become self employed in an area where this professional training is necessary. It's not the same as the government imposing it on you and I imagine your CPD is NOT criticised and derided by ignorant bigots sneering about it.

Final question : I assume you set the training costs against your tax?

Makes me soo angry when non school staff think they know it all!! We would rather have the kids in then sit through endless but necessary training!!

Bloody phone refresher training