To wish that our local primary and secondary school could have the same inset and occassional days

[ReallyTired]

Now that the gove and his gang is allowing schools more freedom to set their holidays this problem is only going to get worse.

My children's school have hardly any cross over with inset days and occassional days. I can understand that inset days have to be when they can get hold of a particular trainer, but many inset days are just moderation. It would make family's lives easier if all the schools in a particular town could try to have their inset/ occassional days on the same day. I feel that inset days dedicated to moderation and occassional could be done on the same day across a town.

My children only share two inset/ occassional days (out of a possible 6 days each). For example the secondary school had a christmas shopping day, but primary school has chosen to have their occassional day at the end of the year.

I think that working parents must be fuming. It is really hard to do anything interesting with an inset day if you have to pick up the other child at 3.10. It would be lovely to go away for a long weekend without taking one child out of school.

[ClaudiusGalen]

We have five INSET days and then there are 3 Occasional Days that schools can put wherever they like. In my LA they are used for May half-term. If you google it you will see different LAs have different rules on them.

[TheGruffalo2]

Well you learn something every day! Sorry another question - when you say your LA uses them for May half term does that mean you don't get a half term break?

[JassyRadlett]

Thanks all!

[ClaudiusGalen]

We get the half-term because of the Occasional Days. One day bank holiday, three Occasional Days and one INSET day for which we do six hours of twilights.

Some schools don't break the holidays down, but we get a holiday calendar every year which shows exactly what each holiday is made up of e.g Occasional Days, bank holidays etc.

[tiredbutstillsmiling]

Haven't got anything to add to original OP but I'm highly jealous of you teachers who have a Christmas shopping day! I've been teaching for 14 years & have never heard of this, let alone experienced it!

[SEmyarse]

Maybe this explains why there always seem to be way more insets than they say there are!

[DarlingGrace]

Its nothing to do with Gove or academies or LA controlled. Three children, three different primaries and three different secondaries, and I've worked in a further three schools in this LA and none of them share inset days. In the main it's down to twilights.

The LA publishes the school year, all schools work their inset/training/twilights round that.

[ReallyTired]

In hertfordshire schools have 5 inset days a year and 1 occassional day taken at the discretion of the head teacher. The idea is to make it easier for faith schools to have a relgious observance day or to enable the whole school to have a planned day off in the middle of term if there is some really pressing reason. A school in a predominantly muslim area might decide to make Eid an occassional day as its less distruptive to learning if everyone is off together.

Every state school in the land (bar academies and free schools) gets 190 teaching days a year. Schools have some leeway on how they choose to organise their terms. Teachers are not getting extra holidays.

[Caboodle]

This year our head let the staff take a vote on whether we should have 2 of our 5 INSET days held as after school sessions - genius idea. (I'm part-time so will have to make up some of this time and this seems reasonable to me). However, our school is very pro-active in leading our own INSETs, and obv wouln't be feasible to do it with all 5 on a meeting heavy calendar.
Thing is OP, education isn't childcare.

[BatmanLovesRobins]

Oh, I see - I've never had an occasional day. Maybe I need to come and work in Herts!

Have never had an INSET for moderation. We have cluster meetings to do this - during staff meeting time.

In theory we do get given an INSET day for report writing at our school - although in the four years I have worked there SLT always make us do something else (hoe to hoop jump, mainly).

I can see why you would want INSET days to match up between schools, but in real life that's just impractical I'm afraid. So YANBU to wish for it, but YABU to expect it.