Teacher Reply Over Summer

[hairnightmare17]

Son is in secondary school.

We received school reports on Monday. One grade on there is different to what my son said he achieved. It was a terrible mark for an important subject and he would need work on it over the summer if it is correct, since he is going into year 11.

I tend to believe my son didn't get that mark but without a reply from the teachers I won't know for sure. I have queried it by email twice this week, no reply. Attempted to call, to no avail. School broke up yesterday.

Is it worth emailing again? Is it likely I would receive a response over the summer break.

Why is a break over the summer equalling doing no study over the summer? Learning a good work/life balance lesson includes not leaving everything to the last minute and putting yourself under pressure. OP's son is clever but lazy, as was I at school. Yes I got A*s in the end but my parents completely left me to it and bloody hell that month before exams was incredibly stressful and panicked - its still my recurring anxiety dream decades later - as I was getting D/E on mocks, getting less than perfect coursework in by skin of teeth etc. etc. I would not want my clever but lazy 15 year old to go through that and would be encouraging them to spend a day a week or a couple of hours twice a week or whatever to go over the stuff they found most challenging that school year and see if they need extra help with anything - it's very easy to gloss over things when you are "clever" and assume you'll "get it" at some point when in fact you could really do with someone spending 30 minutes going over it with you one-to-one.

I wouldn't expect a teacher to reply to an email in the summer holidays although some might. I would expect a teacher to respond to an email within 4 working days during term time. If the boy's true ability in maths is only a grade 4/5 at the end of Year 10, it's ridiculous for some posters to suggest that he could improve by 'self-teaching' during the holidays - he would need help - paid or otherwise.

VickyEadie is correct about teachers' salaries though - teachers are paid an annual salary accruing at a daily rate

Ignoring the sniping about teachers holidays.

Surely the important thing is your sons level of understanding. Can whoever would manage this “Bootcamp” do a session to asses his ability first?

We are paid for working 195 days plus 5 pd days. My contract states 195 + 5 days.

It's why TA contracts end up being a bitch on them because their pay arrangement comes from LAs.

Teachers are salaried. They are paid X to work 195 days a year plus 5 pd days.

TAs are generally not salaried and are under different conditions which is why a TA job can be advertised as being full time on £16000 but in reality is significantly less because it gets pro rata-ed down to term time plus 5 days, then pro rata-ed again to 32.5 hours.

All the time teachers are not in school (except weekends) is paid holiday. All of it. It's why women can return from mat leave and start their full pay again at the beginning of the summer holiday
No the pay is for 195 + 5 (and statutory hols) spread out over 12 months.

Women coming from maternity leave before the summer is the same set up as a woman in a non-teaching job coming back from maternity but using her acrewed annual leave to have another month off. The only difference is that teachers can't acrew annual leave so I couldn't come back from maternity leave in January and then say "but i'll be back at the end of february because I didn't get my holiday whilst on maternity'. If you are able to come back before the summer then that's just luck of the draw.

Agree, Maisypops, except it is 190 days, + 5 Inset. The students are in school for 190 and we used to be too, until Kenneth Baker introduced Inset Days in the late '80s.

Very true wow. You know what I mean. This is proof I shouldn't mumsnet whilst nursing a hangover form end of term celebrations.

MaisyPops has it exactly right. Imagining teachers have 24 weeks paid holiday is ridiculous. As Maisy says you can't return from maternity in January and then use your accrued holiday to actually return in February.

We are salaried, and receive wages each month, regardless it term-time/break, but that only 5 weeks of the13 is paid. We are therefore paid for 195 days, plus 25, meaning we are effectively unpaid for the bulk of the holidays. Getting a salary cheque 12 times a year is irrelevant

Indeed. I don't see why PP can't understand this. Isn't this what is called "annualising"? So you get paid, say, £30,000 for the 195 days. And £0 for the rest of the working days of the year, less the statutory 20 days Annual Leave.

So your salary for 10 months is paid in equal instalments over 12 months rather than paid over 10 months, with 2 months of no pay at all. But that doesn't mean that you're paid for all your time - just that you choose to have a lower amount spread over 12 months, rather than a higher amount for 10 months and nothing for 2 months.

And every teacher I know who has returned from Maternity Leave (notwithstanding the birthdate of their child), has come back for the last couple of weeks of the Summer term, in order to ensure being back on full salary over the holidays. I can't imagine they'd do that if they didn't have to.

Teachers are paid for 39 weeks and wages are spread out over 12 months. This is so we get an equal wage packet all year round.

I wouldn't expect a reply from the teacher over the holidays.
But a mistake was made in my dds report at a similar stage - the report said G for Maths when it should have been a C! I received a reply to my query and an emailed corrected report within 24 hours of making contact with the school.
It turned out to be data entry error by the school.

VickyEadie

I may have been mistaken with the days. I’m on holiday and I barely know which day it is
However, I am NOT wrong about the salary being spread over twelve months.
I come from a generation of teachers and I’ve been told of the time when they used to get their wages handed to them by the HT!
They didn’t get paid during the holidays as they weren’t there!!!
Your comment about annual leave is irrelevant.
We are NOT paid for the summer holidays. Though I DO enjoy getting paid during July while I’m sitting around doing nothing
I have done two years where I didn’t have a permanent contract. I got the full year’s pay during the working year. I didn’t get paid for any holidays as I didn’t work when the school was closed!
I signed on during the summer. It was pretty good to have had the full salary plus a bit more during the summer holidays
Before any one bashes me for that comment, I’ve paid plenty in NI and tax in the intervening 25 years

And as for the comments about ensuring full salary after Maternity Leave, do other professions return to a lower salary??? Does anyone??? I’m baffled by that comment, VickyEadie

I took 6 months Mat leave with my first then the full year with my second. I was able to save enough money to pay my mortgage during the months when I had no pay (or very little)
I came back to my full salary. Why wouldn’t I?

While you’re on Maternity Leave, you accrue two days for each full week that you’re off. So with DC1, I had 4 days and I took 4 Fridays off.
With DC2, I had 10 days, IIRC. I added them on to my Mat Leave and was paid for them.
The same rule applies if you’re sick during a holiday. For example, if you ended up in hospital for three weeks of your summer holiday or you were certified sick by your doctor for something like shingles, for example; then you’d be entitled to 6 days if you were ill for 3 weeks.
A lot of HT’s won’t tell you this, however!!!!

Obviously, you have to be able to prove it and can’t just say, Oh I was ill during my holidays!”
My HT was aghast when I told her that I was due 10 days and she was asking me how was she supposed to fund it and how was she supposed to cover it???
Not my problem, mate you’re the one getting paid big bucks for the responsibility!
In the end up, I was able to add it on to my Mat Leave; got a cheap out of term UK holiday during a heatwave. Result

Who cares if the holiday is paid or unpaid (although it is unpaid!). It is still holiday. I don't work during my holidays unless I want to.

I can't believe that posters like VickyEadie have been teachers for any length of time when they don't understand that teachers are paid in the holidays not for the holidays.

On the 'e-mail should be sent to a teacher's mobile phone' - I, and I had always assumed all teachers, am unable to use a mobile phone in school during my working hours. It is acceptable in the staff room at lunchtime, but not at any other time while students are present.

Therefore, I have my school e-mail available from my classroom desktop, and from my home computer (also happens to be a desktop). The latter is in a 'study' area - if I am in it, I am working, if I am not, I am not. That is how I manage to maintain some kind of 'mental work life balance' in a job that can easily spill over into all waking (and sometimes sleeping - often dream about school, especially when dealing with serious child protection issues) hours.

@cantkeepawayforever my original comment was, I assumed emails went to phones, because that is my workplace experience. I did not intend to infer they should go to teachers' phones. I don't care where they go to, as long as I get a response before the end of term. If the school hadn't sent the assessment out so late, then teachers would have had more time to respond.

Can't win. Teachers working with students to the end of term and there being some tight turnarounds means people like the OP complaining because things weren't done to their liking.

I tried to get a final assessment done with one of my classes, we had a couple of activity days/trips, students out on student leadership trips, music exams, sports day. I was off timetable on transition days with the new cohort. Funnily enough things didn't quite go to plan in terms of getting all students through assessments and getting it turned around as I had lots of incomplete classes.
Equally, I was out of school a few times on these days.

Thankfully none of the parents I work with decide to make snipey comments about how they think I should manage my marking, workload, planning, emails.

All the OP needs to do is tell their lazy child that they have 25 hours of lessons a week and they should probably knuckle down and work instead of coasting. Problem solved.

@MaisyPops thanks for all your understanding and input. The scales have fallen from my eyes now.

Goodness.

It seems to me that your son is fifteen and old enough to have a discussion with about where he is up to in science, what grade he genuinely got (he knows you will find out in the end), and whether he thinks he needs to put in a bit of work in the holidays. He's not a young child any more and you can't do his science for him. He needs to take a bit of ownership of his own learning.

The scales have fallen from my eyes now.

So they should OP. Yes, I know you didn't mean that but you have no idea if the teacher read your e-mail during the last week of term. Were they away on an activity week with students? Many teachers at my DC's school are abroad on trips.
As for your DS, why are you even questioning the grade? He got a 4 in a previous assessment & he got a 7 in another one, It is obvious he is not a steady 7. The teacher probably reported his latest or average grade. Sounds like your DS is trying to pass the buck.

seems to me that your son is fifteen and old enough to have a discussion with about where he is up to in science, what grade he genuinely got (he knows you will find out in the end), and whether he thinks he needs to put in a bit of work in the holidays.

and this ^

^Just a point here: teachers are paid DURING their holidays not FOR their holidays. We are only actually paid for directed time in school; lessons, duties meetings, open eves and parents eves.
Everything done out side of that time is UNPAID overtime. During term time that can be an extra 20 hours per week^

No!
Permanent teachers in England and Wales are paid an annual salary accruing at a daily rate. They are paid during the holidays (and weekends) because every day is a potential working day - a day on which they can choose to carry out such reasonable additional work as may be necessary (in their professional opinion) to effectively discharge their duties as a teacher. If they think (as a professional) that they have effectively discharged their duties during directed time (the 1265 hours/195 days) then they need not do any extra work (in theory!) outside these hours.

By all means argue that the volume of work that needs to done during undirected time has become unreasonable for many teachers - but they are paid for the work carried out during undirected time and for the work that they choose to carry out during the school holidays as well.

I just can't understand why so many teachers seem confused about their pay and conditions.

Do you really think that the Unions would stand by and do nothing if every single hour a teacher works outside of directed time was actually unpaid overtime and not part of their contract?

The thing is, OP, whatever your DS 'actually' got - a 4, a 7, or something in between - a bit of work won't hurt. Going overboard WILL hurt, and doing nothing at all isn't great either- but a bit of revision and consolidation will be fine, regardless of what it says ion his report.

Interestingly, DD's science teacher has forbidden summer work, requiring rest, relaxation and exercise instead, but she will do quite a bit on her 2 'coursework heavy' options, read her set English books again, do regular vocab work on both her languages etc - as well as 10 days of family holiday, a 7 day course in her extracurricular activity, and a LOT of sleep.

Clavinova
We accept that work has to be done outside of our contracted 32.5 hours a week during term time.
Contracts state that there's 'any other reasonable...' so it's not unreasonable to be doing planning and marking out of the school day. It's also not unreasonable to do some work during the holidays.
We are not expected to be contactable during the holidays. We are not expected to be at the beck and call of SLT or parents when we are on holiday.

Doing our OWN preparation during non directed hours is a reasonable part of being in a profession.

If every day is a potential working day, when exactly in a year do you propose is our holiday where it isn't a working day?

If we worked 48 weeks of the year like other professions, our salaries would have to be higher. (See the difference between TA pay vs full time equivalent council positions)