to ask for a justification of inset days

[5Foot5]

Really, really don't want to sound like I am teacher-bashing here. This is a genuine question.

There is a story being discussed on the news programme about a school which has decided to have all of its inset days at one go so that parents could potentially take advantage of term time prices for holidays. This got me thinking about the timing of inset days generally.

I assume that these days are used for training and /or acquainting staff with the myriad changes imposed on them all the time by government.

But, here is the question, why do these days have to be taken during what would otherwise be term time? Why are they not held during the school holidays when there is surely enough capacity to accommodate these days?

Can i add that I am no longer affected by this since DD has now left school but it really has only just occurred to me..

Libraries - I don't see how holiday care providers could work around inset days - they're different in different schools and also they are five individual days scattered throughout the year - how would a provider be able to have a full staff, in a fully equipped venue, all up and running just for one day?

Ha ha ha ha clam oh we are so busted. Became like no teacher ever wanted to get home early ever. I love this post. It is a real de stressor after the most intense term of the school year.

In fact. Dammit I love you all.

Every single time I have taken children on trips, or stayed to supervise after school events, there have been a few children picked up late. Not one has apologised.

part of the job though, isn't it.

Except that also meant MY children had to be picked up even later!!

the 5 day block of inset is fairly common around here (nw) although I'm not sure whether they actually do the inset then but the extra week is very popular.

most seem to have introduced it due to the difficulty in finding childcare many parents were facing

as I said earlier which no one picked up on I don't care for In Service Training days either. No now picked up on that opinion funnily enough.

Not all teachers strike.

Iggi999, that's depressing but I guess is true. The people who are making the decisions about stuff like this, including the odious Baker himself, are never going to be in a position where they get to July and are panicking that they won't have enough leave left to be able to take a day off over Xmas when there's no childcare available - they have a nanny on tap or, in the case of the men, a wife that doesn't work, so they don't have to think about these things.

I'll still put the suggestions to the school though.

cruikshank you've learnt from this thread that there is no need for random inset days?! Are we reading the same thread?

cruickshank- not round here they aren't. In our school this year one wasn't tacked onto a holiday. In all the five other local primaries I know they all were. Of those five days, I would say 3 applied to all six schools and the others to all but one. That's not that hard for a provider to find worth covering.

The last strike day my school decided to "work to rule" for the day-so we opened the gates at 8,45 ( instead of being on duty for half an hour so parents can drop-and-run) and cancelled after school clubs so the first teacher left the building five minutes after the last child.
You would have thought we had been on strike for a month given the number of complaints we got-even though we advised parents what we were going to do beforehand!

Oh, and do please come back and share the school's response to your request that they change all the dates to suit your work schedule.

It's a bit like what we dinosaurs used to call...'a mark book' grin. Except that it enables the Ofsted inspector to see at a glance which feckless underachieving numpty to sit next to & ask searching questions about the quality of your teaching...

That made me laugh so much I spilt my wine ;)

I like that cruickshank is moaning at teachers that she has to take holiday days out of her holiday allowance in order to cover INSET days for her kids.

Teachers who can't take time out of their holiday allowance to cover their kids INSET days. They have to organise childcare and don't even have that option.

Lucky cruickshank, eh?

Back in the 80s I spent a lot of time sitting v quietly reading in the book corner of my mother's classroom on my school's inset days. Don't suppose parent teachers do that now.

... Then people would say " what a shame you didn't have an inset that day". She would look at them like until the penny dropped.

I'm taking my DS into school for our next INSET training day!

( Mind you, he begins teacher training in September so is getting some early practice in-does that count

I've learnt a lot of things from this thread, clam. I've learnt, for example, that I hate teachers, that inset days aren't random, also that inset days are random but I should just suck it up, that because I am genuinely worried that I won't have enough leave to take Xmas Eve off that I am responsible for recruitment/retention problems in the teaching profession, that I shouldn't question how things are because I knew the score when I had kids, right, that saying the way things are organised is wrong, particularly when it's clear they don't suit thousands of other people, means that I'm expecting the entire country to change in order to accommodate my petty futile whim of trying to earn a living, that my real problem is that my kids spend more time in school/childcare than they do with me and lots of other lovely nuggets besides all of that.

So, it's been a lovely thread so far.

However, some teachers and other contributors to the thread have made some suggestions that sound sensible to me, in amidst the hundreds of bitchy, pointless posts from you and others like you, so yes, I will talk to other parents at the school and then approach the school with some suggestions. I'm sure it won't make a blind bit of difference, but at least I'll feel like I'm doing something. And you can pat yourself on the back and know that, in a public forum, you have presented yourself as an outstanding example of the teaching profession, and goodness me, whatever are all of those people (of whom I am not one) doing bad-mouthing you.

I'm not specifically moaning at teachers, noblegiraffe - it's the general set-up that's at fault, to my mind. There are a lot of teachers on this thread, but of course I don't hold any of them personally responsible for inset days - I'm not a fucking idiot - I'm just frustrated at the situation.

The whole INSET day moan annoys me almost as much as the "too many holidays" moan. Most of us had INSET days when we were kids - it's not new.

I am a teacher. I have to organise childcare for INSET days. I do the following:

DH takes one of his 25 days of annual leave.
DH takes an unpaid day (if he has run out of annual leave)
Mum has them (not always possible)
They go to a friend for the day and I pay that back during school holidays to save the friend a day of childcare.
If all else fails, I pay a teenage babysitter to mind them.

Agree with Xenadog that the training is invariably dull as anything and stuff we've done a million times before. I'd much rather be with the children.

The last strike day my school decided to "work to rule" for the day-so we opened the gates at 8,45 ( instead of being on duty for half an hour so parents can drop-and-run) and cancelled after school clubs so the first teacher left the building five minutes after the last child.

Do teachers only get paid from 8.30 - 3 then?
As well as not being paid for holidays?

My contracted hours are 8.25-3.15. Kids are in school 8.40-3.