To wish schools would scrap registration

[gettingevenhotter]

Seems to make more sense to me to register kids in lessons.

We could finish half an hour earlier if this was the case. Bliss.

I was unhappy when my school did away with afternoon registration with the form tutor. It provided a useful break between lunchtime and learning time. Lunchtime problems then started to creep into the lesson after lunch, for example lunchtime fallings out and fights, which could have been resolved or defused during registration.The registration time was also a useful catch up/follow up time from morning reg, especially if someone had been late.
And vertical tutor groups were mostly a very bad idea.

In schools with short registration periods, when is PHSE taught?
I'd take our 30 min reg periods over the horror that is drop-down/collapsed days any time!

We (20+ years ago) had morning registration (20 mins), after lunch registration (5 mins) then another registration after last lesson (5 mins). Once a week (IIRC) we had an hour after the after lunch registration with form tutor. The one I had in years 8 & 9 made us sit there in silence. Pointless waste of time. Teachers also took their own register in class, but usually just by looking around once we’d sat down. This was in the days when everything was paper based. Everyone hated last reg (I suspect the teachers did as well) and the after lunch one was a PITA; had to go from lunch room to form room then back across school to next lesson, usually being bollocked for being late.

Tutor time / registration was one of the best times imo. On days when there was no assembly or other stuff to do we'd just spend time chatting. It was the one time of day when I could spend time getting to know the pupils and building a relationship with them which isn't really possible in KS3 classes.

How to have a meaningful chat with thirty kids ...

How to have a meaningful chat with thirty kids ...

You don't talk with them all at once. Because you meet every day, as teacher you get to listen, to and overhear the pupils' chat, both to you and each other. You can see how class relationships work when not under lesson conditions. I've always found it really illuminating, particularly with younger sets.

But as you say in your OP registration should be scrapped for no better reason than you don't like it, look for a school that doesn't have it, there must be some around.

Also a school could make something of this time by creating more tutor groups and halving the size. 15 at our achool which gives more opportunity. Plus they have a tutor and a co tutor (usually a teacher and a TA) so ratios help.

More tutor groups require more staff though. Ee struggle to staff the ones that we have

They just require using all staff from what I can see. Including TAs. Even the head and the SMT all have tutor groups because the school believe in making good use of tutor time.

In Scotland they would not be allowed to give a TA a class. If you ever timetable all staff members at the same time, who on earth covers when someone is off?

I don’t like it because it’s dull and chaotic and pointless. Not just personal taste.

These days safeguarding rules; at my school children must be accounted for at every moment of the day - registration at the start and the end, and during the first 10 minutes of every lesson. Any child not present in a lesson (where they have been present up to that point) must be reported to and tracked down by a member of staff on duty that period for that purpose.

This all stems from an incident in a local school which was crucified by Ofsted where one pupil could not be accounted for at a given moment during the inspection. All other local schools are terrified of being caught out in the same situation.

Exactly, so since they have to be registered in every lesson anyway it seems daft to set half an hour of the day aside for it.

It’s not that controversial, despite what some think

getting,

Is it dull and chaotic and pointless in EVERY tutor group in the school? Or only in yours?

UIs it worth requesting some CPD around being a tutor - or all school training on being a tutor, if the problem seems more widespread than simply your form?

DD has had tutors who don't care about her tutor group, and those registration sessions WERE dull and pointless. She has, on the other hand, had debates on topical issues, some really valuable PSHCE, specific teaching on revision methods, insights into possible careers etc etc, because that is how tutor time has been timetabled by the tutors who care (which is the vast majority). She uses very little of the pastoral support on offer BUT she does really appreciate the time taken to sort out behaviour, absenteeism, playground issues within the registration time, as it then does not spill over into subject lessons and waste any of that time.

Do you really think half an hour is set aside each day just for you to take the register?

Tutor time being dull, pointless and chaotic isn’t some deep unspoken truth, it’s you and your school doing a bad job of it.

Thing is giraffe, we disagree.

You and others think political debates and reading is a good use of time, I don’t. I think they are better embedded into lessons.

It’s cool. We can disagree.

Getting,

In primary, we think of registration time as a time when certain (often squeezed) parts of the curriculum can be delivered, as well as when key pastoral issues are dealt with.

So the curriculum for registration time - like, for example, the coverage of assembles - is carefully planned as part of the whole school timetable, both in terms of the whole class and a key time for provision for those with SEN, whether learning or behavioural.

From my observation of DC's secondary, they think about it the same way, and subjects like citizenship, RE, anti-radicalisation agenda, drugs and alcohol education, careers advice, study skills, preparation for work such as CVs and interviews, mental health provision such as knowledge of relaxation techniques, as well as key skills like extended reading, knowledge of key facts, speaking to an audience, and provision for those with SEN, are all carefully planned into the registration time timetable (along with some less structured sessions for purely pastoral work). That then means that nobody assumes such things are 'covered in lessons', and frees up those lessons for subject content and skills.

RE should have its own lesson and not be covered just in tutor time

You’re with them all day in primary anyway (you poor bastards!)

Tw1nset,

In KS3, that is the case. In KS4, for those not taking it to GCSE, it is delivered mainly through tutor times and occasional off-curriculum days.

Getting,

But why does that change anything? The point I am making that, in all levels of education, registration takes time, and that time can either be used sensibly and productively, or wasted. IME, it is planned sensibly and productively.

I think you’d struggle to do anything particularly productive in twenty minutes then ten minutes anyway.

I’m all for PSHE but as a lesson.

Then think of your weekly 100 minutes of morning tutor times as a good double period of lessons available for PSHCE. What will you teach in it? Just because you have to divide it into 20 minute chunks doesn't mean you can't plan it in such a way that it is productive?

Er well yeah it does since two of those sessions are assemblies anyway.

They have twenty minute reg in the morning and ten in the afternoon.

They come into the afternoon one red, hot, sweaty and stinking after running around playing footy.

So you have an hour of productive time (the 10 minute afternoon ones, I agree, are a sensible time for silent reading or keeping their basic maths or writing skills up to date: does the school run a times table-type challenge for form groups, or a general knowledge quiz or an inter-tutor-group debate, or run tutor group charity events?) a week. 1 full lesson. How will you use it?