to ask WHY in the name of Gove are teachers striking again?

[loftyclopflop]

DD's school is closing on 1st October because they have chosen to strike. Is it over pay, pensions and conditions? Did they achieve anything by striking a couple of years ago other than massively inconveniencing a lot of parents?

I know Gove is a twat but do they really expect to change anything by taking the day off?

The idea of getting work done in school would be fine if the conditions suited it. I've never been in a school where I could have the quiet to do the reading necessary for my subject, whether it's pupils' writing or new texts/professional reading.

To be fair, I do teach English in Australia, where texts change regularly, no exam text lasting longer than 4 years. 6 new ones for next year for me.

So how many hours a week fo you work Aris?

I have just returned to teaching after s long break and trying to figure out what is reasonable. At the moment I am actually finding it less work than I expected, therefore wondering what I am not doing that I should be doing!

so Arisbottle if 3 hours after school, in school, isn't unreasonable, you think it reasonable that a teacher is in school by 8am to prep their day and be there until gone 6pm marking (given that most schools finish between 3 - 3:30pm)? How many of us can find reliable, quality childcare from, say, 7:30am till 7pm? You don't think teachers should be able to see their own children at all during the week? Or have any kind of family life? what of those of us who teach who are also single parents - should we not be allowed to teach because we we have no one to drop off our children at breakfast club when it opens at 8am and pick them up when it closes at 6pm and we're in school at both those times?

And why would you assume that even a teacher with quality, well-resourced schemes of work is able to get away with little/no planning? My department would meet this 'standard' but I still spend serious amounts of time planning because I like things to work the way I want them to work, not the way one of my colleagues has said things should work. That has nothing at all to do with the quality of their planning, or the logic of their lesson sequencing...just simply that my pedagogical views and comprehension differs and I place emphasis on different skills and ways of learning.

It varies but most weekdays I do 7am until 6pm in school and then a few hours in the evening . I work about 3-4 hours on a Sunday. I do not work after 6pm on a Friday night. I get in just after eight on one weekday and leave at 4pm one week day.

So roughly about 70 hours a week, at peak times it can go up to 80 and sometimes it goes down towards 60 hours or even lower when exam classes have left.

I do nothing in the holidays .

If my numbers are wrong - I apologize.

Where have I said that you need to be in school every day until 6pm? The beauty of teaching is that you can leave by 4pm and carry on working when the children are in bed.

Our teachers do spend little time planning on a day to day basis, yes sometimes we would rather do things exactly our way - but it is a sacrifice we have made to keep our sanity.

English is the same here actually. In my 12th year of teaching (how did that happen!!) and always had new texts to prepare. I know find I get a bit stale if I teach the same thing for more than 3 years and have to shake things up a little.

I cant possibly do 3 hours marking a day on top of school, I have a severely disabled son. I run extra curricular activities everyday and spend loads of time preparing those (at least 15 hours in last two weeks, not that anyone recognises this extra work). For my subject (music) I truly believe that the clubs I run have a million times the educational value than marking books where kids have written down my own verbal feedback on performance/composition tasks.

To me, marking and planning are inseparable- you must mark to inform your planning. Your lessons will not be well-planned if you have not recently marked. Marking is not an additional extra, it is integral to the learning process. I am another teacher who does not recognise the hours discussed on this thread. I work 55 hours a week term time, that includes weekends, and an average of ten hours a week in the holidays. I know for sure because last year I logged down my hours every week just to see!

Can I ask any primary school teachers here, do you teach the same year group every year? My mother was a primary school teacher for over 40 years in various countries and she taught the same year group equivalent for her whole career. Where DD goes to school, the teachers change year groups every year so you could be teaching P1 one year and, for example, P4 the next. I understand that if you do keep the same year group you will be doing some new material each year/ changing some methods etc, but I always think the teachers at DD's school must have so much additional work from teaching different years. Surely consistency would cut down on their workload? Or is it not the norm to chop and change every year?

Everybodysgonesurfing, is that in a full time post?

Assessment and planning are inseparable. Marking means different things to different people. I tell my staff to mark what they need to inform their planning. In the subjects I line manage, students can self assess frequently, and I think that is actually more powerful, and immediate, than a once over by a teacher. Misconceptions can then be addressed on the spot, rather than next lesson, or a week down the line. We mark and give feedback on specific assessment points. With more wordy subjects, I realise it is different.

Arisbottle I second your point about flexibility. * " ... You can leave by 4pm and carry on working when the children are in bed"
I am not a teacher. But like many ppl my work involves "paperwork", some of which I can allocate to non - contact time. It makes my working life much easier.
Be even better if there was less of it

Hi Taz1212 - Primary teacher here. Yes it is common (but not universal) practice to move year groups every few years. Even if you do stay in the same year group for several years (like me) other things change and we change the curriculum. Some schools do whole school topics, so they need a rolling programme that is years long to avoid repetition during the child's time at the school, so each term means starting planning from scratch.
It is up to the headteacher which year group we teach in and teachers may have no choice in moving. If there is a vacancy in Y5 and I'm a Y2 teacher now, but she wants me in Y5 I move.
A few years ago the Rose Review decided to change the school curriculum. Like many schools we spent many staff meetings and planning sessions preparing for this new curriculum. It got withdrawn and was not made compulsory. We now have the new 2014 curriculum to plan and prepare for, ensuring our topics provide progression and continuity. Much of the curriculum is pretty similar, but will need reinventing the wheel to deliver it.
Finally, even the maths and literacy I teach each year to my Year 2 class cannot be regurgitated from the previous year. Yes some ideas and resources get reused, but each cohort is so different planning needs to start from scratch.
Hope that all makes sense!

Aris, I've been thinking about it and it is possible that the day I get given a load of detailed, centrally planned lesson plans to teach from might be the day I quit teaching. It sounds like something Gove might do, because he doesn't trust teachers to plan. I'm not a lesson delivery automaton.

aris I think that it can also very much depend on the type of school you are working in. I have just moved from a very 'nice' school (not private, but similar) where my working hours were manageable to an extremely challenging state comprehensive school and it feels like a completely different job. I have worked until past midnight almost very night since we went back, I have barely seen my three year old DD on a weekend as I have been working both days every day. We have very long lessons and the behaviour is extremely challenging, I cannot turn up unprepared, I cannot plan much ahead until I know what they can or cannot do from the previous lesson. I have students in my bottom set year 9 who are now on a lower level than they were when they finished KS2. Some are rarely in school, have no support from home, couldn't care less about education - it is hard, hard work to try and motivate them every lesson. It is exhausting. My department is good at sharing lessons and resources, but even so I still have to take the and create my own lessons from them, if I tried to teach someone else's lesson it just wouldn't work.

Marking my books in my subject really doesn't inform planning. Usually I am just marking my own words or wiki entries on different composers or musicians. Class assessments (practical performances and compositions) inform my planning.

Yes, full time post! Secondary SLT, I teach English for half the timetable (two year 10 classes, 1 year 11 and 1 year 12) and line manage pastoral team (heads of house) and learning support (senco, who then line manages her team. At times of the year my hours go up to 60 or more if there have been open evenings etc. I never have break or lunch. But I cannot work many more hours as I have a three year old yo bring up. I never work when she is awake at home. I have a fantastic school with very little paperwork and I don't do admin tasks. I mark smartly and often enough and my work including teaching and line management has contributed of Ofsted outstanding. Someone upthread said they mark all books everyday. That is ridiculous and unnecessary!

But in primary marking daily, is some format, is needed.

But everybody those hours are the norm for most jobs.Not getting your point.

I don't think the hours are the real issue. The only reason they get mentioned is due to the accusation that teachers work 9-3 with long holidays.
I don't think the hours have changed over my 12 years. It's the conditions that have. That's due to the policies of Gove.

Which most other professions have too without the holidays,security,yearly pay rises for just being there and superb pensions.

these threads are hilarious

teachers have it so cushy
actually we work x hours a week
well so doe everyone else, do you think you are special
no, but you made it sound like i work 5 hours a day, and that's untrue
5 hours! man teachers have it cushy

etc etc etc

i am at peace with the idea that most people think i am an overpaid, lazy idiot no good for anything else, forced to teach because of my incompetence. nothing i can possibly say will change that. (i am a bit that they nonetheless hand over their children to me, daily)

i do my best,my students make excellent progress and are a delight. i love what i do. i am very lucky in that way.

i can only hope that in my next life, i can come back as someone more useful to society, who performs a selfless vocation, instead of selfishly doing the things i love- maybe an estate agent?

We don't get yearly pay rises actually. In an academy you do not have job security. And I would willingly support anyone else campaigning for a decent pension. And it's just that, decent. Not as good as what I signed up for despite it being a healthy pension fund. It's not teachers' fault that many pension funds have lost money.
But anyway, the strike is not really about any of that. It's about changes being made without consultation. People feel better about changes if they feel they've been listened to, even if the final decision doesn't go their way.

there is no job security anymore- you can be put on competency and out within a half a term. it happens, it happened twice at dh's school.

likewise, we have performance related pay. there is no automatic progression. my school has promised to not put people's pay down, but i don't know that they aren't allowed to.

your job can also be made redundant - happened to a teacher at my school last year.