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..

I used to hate inset as a TA. I would rather have had the option to take leave and not be paid, we had to attend.

the highlight was the free lunch but even that dwindled eventually

Clam - I do agree with you that cheaper holidays shouldn't be the driving factor, however our school has consistently had the best/almost best attendance figures amongst all schools in our area and in large part I think this is because the extra week holiday (and the lure of a cheap holiday) has stopped as many people taking term time holidays.
It won't make much difference to me as we never holidayed during the extra week - but already many parents who have used that week to go abroad for the last few years have expressed that they are going to continue taking that week anyway (and will take the fine) so inevitably the school's attendance figures will suffer.
The new Head has explained that he would rather the teachers have relevant training at the same time as other local schools hence the change next year, I think that's fair enough but I can see why some parents are disgruntled when they've gotten used to the old way the school did things.

Thanks libraries (great name btw). I understand that bit, but I don't get how term time/holidays have remained the same length pre- and post INSET.

I've just searched and it seems that pre-1988 teachers had five days to take ad hoc, which is now where the INSET days come in.

So, my assumption is that those five ad hoc days could be taken during term time, and presumably cover/supply teachers used so pupils were not affected. Is this correct?

This might already have been said but if they are part of the school holidays why can't they still be spread out through the year within the other holidays and an extra week on the end of the May holiday for example?

That's not a criticism by the way, it's a genuine question.

I don't know about ad hoc training time. Yes, it was presumably covered.

Holidays haven't stayed the same length - the school year officially got one week longer. But that one week was broken into 5 days on which the children weren't required to attend.

Eh? No, it's not correct. Not sure where you've been searching and found that.

Grumpy - in most areas they are tacked onto holidays.

It would be hard to create a one week block because training isn't very efficient as a one week block. Businesses would never lump all your training into a single week of the year.

Also, hiring outside trainers would be very difficult. Unless every school booked a different single week. Which parents would complain about.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-33580550
This is on t he top ten on the BBC at the moment, this school is taking the five days as a block. As a teacher I don't think it'd be very productive to do that as five days of training without any implementation or other times isn't the best way to learn

Libraries, good point about booking trainers.

To be fair most businesses don't train all the staff in one go, they either don't offer training or free up a couple of people at a time. Perhaps that could be an option?

Thinking about it, a collaborative approach across a number of schools would help with the trainer availability thing. Training rotates around with a number of staff from each area accessing it, they then feedback to the rest of the team in a team meeting. Could work out to be more efficient than each school sending everyone en masse to do the same training. It's what happens in other areas and works successfully. Would reduce the number of people taking holiday in school term so attendance improves.

It's on the TES Community forum, Clam. I have tried but failed to copy and paste the link.

Thanks libraries - that's the key bit I was missing - school year officially getting one week longer, but children not being required to attend.

community.tes.co.uk/tes_have_your_say/f/19/t/474992.aspx

Grumpy adding them to the May half term would only work for Primary it's the height of exam season for GCSE and A levels and two weeks break then would be disastrous for some students one is often enough to have a huge effect on students hence I run revision sessions during that holiday.

Timetabling of Inset days should have nothing to do with attendance and term-time holidays. They are different issues and just because the DM has pounced upon on one school's bloody stupid idea of lumping 5 days altogether so some people can get a cheaper holiday, doesn't mean it's a desirable thing to do across the board.
And plenty of teachers already go for training courses at various points throughout the year, according to their own or the school's need. That's in addition to Inset and weekly staff meetings. Not all Inset days require external speakers or collaborating with other schools. There are dozens of different things that individual schools need to plan for themselves, and these needs can crop up throughout the year.

Sorry, but that "quote" on the TES forum is hardly established fact. It's one poster who I think has their facts wrong. I was teaching pre-1988 and there were not 5 "occasional" days.

Grumpy - school staff train like that as well. Whole staff training tends to be for things like Safeguarding training where everyone has to do it every 3 years, so it makes sense to do that on an INSET day. Or something like Autism Awareness, again, that all staff need.
When it's specific to Early Years, or just to Yr6 (or2) SATs, and so forth, then schools send the person (or people) with responsibility for that area out to the course than some parents moan because there is either a supply teacher in, or cover by HLTAs or cover supervisors rather than qualified teachers

I'm a teacher & I'm with OP.

Full school INSET days are an appalling waste of time roughly 90% of the time. It'd be much better to give us that week of holiday back & offer a range of training options on a sign up basis.

So you'd be required to do 25 hours of INSET per year & account for it to your HOD/line manager. I've arranged to go in for much of the second week of the holidays a) to train up a colleague in organising overseas school trips as she's taking over from me & b) to receive training from my HOD in spreadsheety stuff as I'm taking up a new job in September which requires that I raise my game in that area - all three of us should be permitted to log that time towards our 25 hours INSET.

Equally, a school could put on holiday/Saturday training sessions which staff could opt for if the topic was of interest/use to them.

Just make it a performance management requirement that everyone puts in their 25 hours, & let them liaise with their line manager re: the specific breakdown of that time.

This year I've had to sit through whole school twilight sessions all year as we disaggregated two days - the vast majority of it not training I needed after 15 years in the job.

The system as it is is highly ineffective, & a royal PITA for teachers who are also parents & have to sort 'one off' childcare 5 days a year for their own dc. Disruptive to everyone out of all proportion to the benefit conferred by 60 bored teachers watching one of their number satisfy a Performance Management target by mass infliction of PowerPoint.

Raven, this is it.

It seems that people are fixed on this way of doing things rather than thinking about what works more effectively.

Collaborate with other schools and run 3 safeguarding training sessions per year (random number as an example) so staff can go in shifts. Or stick it on as an evening session and then let people take time back as time in lieu (which isn't going to be impossible given that people can be freed up to do individual training).
Shared cost and less inconvenience to everyone.

Use online training.

For autism awareness and the like, the research I'm aware of, suggests that it's of limited benefit and what works best is a specialist working alongside teachers with an individual and using this as a conduit to share more general information which can be generalised to others (meets the early intervention model for universal services too)

The May thing, by the way, was just a case of picking a random holiday as an example not a suggestion.

My safeguarding training in September is in an evening session. Different staff need it at different times, especially if they've moved schools as I have.

The online training is a good idea, Grumpy, and in Au some of our training is done this way.

However, what needs to be recognised is the essentially punitive nature of the INSET/Baker days in the UK. It is vengeance for the industrial action of the 80s, when teachers were made to pay for what they did by having part of their holidays taken away.

The government couldn't then, and still don't give a tuppenny fuck what goes on these sessions, just so long as they happen. Schools try to make them meaningful, but quite often they're not. Staff are bored, parents pissed off.

We have the equivalent of 6 INSET days a year and I have to say, ours are excellent!

We have 5 twilight sessions throughout the year and then a full week of INSET days. I work in a college though, so our INSET Week is held when the students are doing all of their external exams and would be on study leave anyway.

We have a good mixture of internal presenters and external - e.g. For safeguarding.

We've found the week to be very effective as you can focus fully on training and have department time to sort out how you will implement things from the training.

The students are still getting the same number of lessons they would otherwise get and we, as staff make the most of the week when they are doing exams.

Our model wouldn't work in school though where there are children not doing exams so they need to be spread out. I think tagging INSET days onto the end or start of term is quite good - if parents are going away they can go early or have a lie in if they get back late.

I worked for a head who used to gleeful set mid week inset days as then staff wouldn't go home before 5 o'clock. She wasn't a very pleasant person, not sure if she's still doing that.

If schools didn't have inset days, how else would they find out about the latest faddy way to teach and generate the mass of paperwork - growth mindset anyone?

Every so often there is a sensible, informative inset - I wish training for children with different additional needs was compulsory every year, and on going with regular input.

Euphemia

With the head that used to set mid week insets, I used to have a policy of waiting until she mentioned it 3 times before I would start to implement it as so many things were suggested and then trickled off after hours of resource making etc.

I hate the fact that people don't remember that they came out of teacher's holidays in the first place.
I am very surprised that people want their children taught by people who don't have up to date training.

I don't think anyone has said that Mehitable, they've said that there are different methods of delivery which may be more efficient.

There are two aspects, one is the inconvenience of the timing (I disagree that having them on the end of holidays is good), we never used to find out there was an inset day till the week before the holidays started so when you had allowed yourself a sigh of relief for sorting childcare you'd realise you had to find an extra day somewhere at relatively short notice. And most people can't afford to go on holiday or have the luxury of an extra lie in on that extra day.

The other is how useful and efficient they are and this seems to be largely down to the HT.