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..

OP, in order to have the INSET days justified, you need to ask Kenneth Baker, it was his idea.

Here are details of where and how to contact him:

www.parliament.uk/biographies/lords/lord-baker-of-dorking/1028

The hours were not 'directed time' prior to 1988.
There weren't so many changes to curriculum before 1988
There was a fraction of the paperwork before 1988, so teachers were much happier to go to meetings / training etc., as their job, in those days was just to teach.
I started teaching in 1988, and a detailed lesson plan was just done whilst training / when in your probationary year. Once you had more experience, it was understood you could teach without having to write out pages and pages of notes for every lesson.
When I started teaching I did quite a lot of what we called 'twilight courses' that would start at 4pm. You could leave school after the kids had gone home, drive across town to the training centre, do a course for 2 or 3 hours then go home and relax as you knew what you were doing the next day but didn't have to prove everything, or make a note of every time you breathed. I also did a training course across 12 Saturday mornings!
However, they then brought in SO much admin and paperwork and recording and tracking and monitoring, and 'training for OFSTED' then having 'practice OFSTEDs etc, the teachers ran out of time and goodwill.

*I assume that these days are used for training

hmm Yeah, well the clue's in the T of Inset. In Service Training.*

Get off your sarky high-horse! If you are not a teacher it is not obvious that the T in a contrived acronym stands for training.

Also the 190 down from 195 thing is news to me. If you are a teacher this might seem obvious but, believe me, this is not the case otherwise.

Still about 30 days more leave then I get!!

30 days that is unpaid.

Scottish teachers are now only paid for 40 days holiday a year. The rest of the holidays are designated school closure days and are unpaid.

Do you fancy being a teacher then 5foot? Sounds like you'd enjoy the long holidays.

sigh It was Thatcher. It was always bloody Thatcher. She took days from school holidays because she was Thatcher.

On inset days I have done:
Setting curriculum for the year
Introductions
Safeguarding
First aid for children

I miss most inset days because I work part-time, so I'm not really qualified to post.

Well OP, you've had the 11-13 years of your DD's time in education to find out this pretty basic stuff.

These threads are getting stupid. I'm not a teacher, I couldn't think of anything worse (for me), my mum is and the extra work she puts in is unreal. Inset days should be kept how they are, teachers deserve the time off they get, all of it. They do a fabulous job obviously some exceptions look after our children and bring some much more than just knowledge to kids.

Despite you saying you are not 'teacher bashing', your word choices imply that you are actually unimpressed by the holiday allocation of teachers.

Just an observation

I've worked part-time for the last 18 years and I've been to every single INSET day during that time!

Course it's paid! You get a monthly salary unless you are a supply teacher in which case you are paid 190th of your salary per day worked.

What you mean is, that the layman's view of teachers' 'holidays' is false. Teachers are not sunning themselves for the next 6 weeks, as any other worker might do during their annual leave. Nowadays they have to spend weeks planning/doing paperwork/whatever (can you tell I have left the profession now? )

30 days more leave than I get
Oh here we go.
Nope. Not a teacher.
The child of a teacher who spent all but two weeks of her leave doing prep, getting her voice back or sorting out classrooms/paperwork.

some parents take the opportunity to complain about "having to find childcare" for days that they always would have had to cover anyway.

Speaking for myself, my beef with inset days is that very often they fall when holiday clubs etc aren't open - they're just random days in the year, and the childminders are all always full and most wouldn't take on an extra child just for one day anyway. So it's not the amount of days that have to be covered that is the issue - I accept that there will always be 14 weeks rather than 13 weeks to pay for full-time childcare - it's just the logistics of finding any kind of childcare at all that is often impossible and also often involves me taking a precious day of annual leave. Unlike teachers I only get 25 days a year, so even losing 2 or 3 so teachers can do their training has quite a big impact on that.

Excellent user name, Giddyon :o

The monthly salary is for ease of budgeting. We are paid for the days we teach, plus a bit, I suppose for holiday (but not 13 weeks of it) and it's spread over twelve months.

But cruikshank, for every parent that prefers Inset days to be tacked on to holidays, there's another who'd prefer them spread out. Schools can't please everyone.

echt Thank you! And to you for being one of a select band who've got it

www.eis.org.uk/print.asp?id=1537&dbase=2

Changes to holidays explained. Daily fraction altered so pay remained unchanged but 40 days paid annual leave stipulated and 26 days unpaid school closure days.

INSET days are not random. They fit round the availablity of visiting speakers/advisors and the development needs of the school and timing in the academic year.

Also, the teachers are very unlikely to have a say in how the days are set, or their content. This has always, in my experience been decided by SLT. While some of them teach, it would be false to say they are the same as teachers in the general sense as cited when bloody stupid threads like this one kick off.

It's like snow days. Teachers don't close the school, the HT does.

Cruikshank, you haven't had to find childcare for inset days. You'd have to find child care anyway for those days as they are part of your child's holiday. It just so happens the school staff are in school.

Yes, but finding childcare during holidays is ok. It's not always easy, and it's a bit of a hodge-podge and I end up really stressed and confused trying to work it all out, but at least there is some available. For random days off (and ok they might not seem random to teachers but they are random to me) there is no childcare available. So I have to take leave.

Indeed echt. Teachers have no say as to the allocation of inset days, school closures or even fining parents for holidays in term time. I wish this was made more clear to parents by schools.

Cruikshank, any school ive been involved in has just tacked inset days to the beginning/end of terms to make it easier for parents.

I can see how random days in the middle of weeks and terms would be frustrating.

I don't really care if teachers have a say in the timing or not - I'm just pointing out that it's not as easy as finding childcare during the holidays when the schools are closed and there is increased childcare provision available. So it's not the fact that you have to pay for an extra week of childcare; it's that there is no childcare provision available for, say, a one-off Monday in October, or a Friday in January etc.