to want some of the last week of term to be used for .. oh I don't know ... education?

[HedTwigg]

fun day all day
trip all day
in-class movies
party all half day of last day

what happened to partying on the last day only

Are you twiglett?

Not unauthorised - let (encourage even) the parents to have authorised absences! In theory 10 days a year is OK - why not these 5 days?

(Not this year though as the weather's so crap, but generally )

blanket ban on any absences .. almost no excuses allowed

ohhh. I find name changing var confusing.

califrau gave me a potter name (even though I don't really do Potter) .. it has my Twig in it though

I believe my character carked it though hence the ghost

She did (or he as I read somewhere )

So you've gone over to the Dark Side, twig?

My dd is not school age but if she was just being parked in front of a video/ DVD I would have no qualms about taking her away, and would write a nice letter to the head to explain. I don't think you are being unreasonable, but can see as a governor you probably can't/ shouldn't do this.

But for me the point of school is the social interaction, and the end of term is such an important time to say goodbye to each other and the class room and the teacher....I really don't care if they do any work or not, but I do think they should be at school and doing something vaguely constructive. Please note that I do think that charging round the playground or sitting around chatting comes under the constructive category - watching dvds doesn't!

Um, YES YABU.

I think you lot are very unreasonable!
Firstly, kids are not plonked in front of dvd's all week. They would get restless and play up(because they've usually seen them before and they don't all want to watch the same thing). They might watch a couple and may be doing lots of activities like painting, colouring, wordsearches etc. Many teachers keep teaching right to the end - very difficult to do as kids have usually switched off mentally when some of their mates have already jetted off on their hols and when sports day etc arrives.
Secondly a teacher's workload virtually doubles in that week.Most of it has to be done before the end of term. Schools are not always open throughout the hols (caretakers are allowed holidays too believe it or not) and records etc have to be passed on before the end of term. Not all teachers can meet up in the holidays to do this.

agree, cornsilk, with all you say

god our last two weeks was knackering for pupils staff and praents

fun day
sportds day
end of term show
reports

frenzy

Ours has lessons to the end but also other fun things - a trip out to the zoo in the last week etc. It's the nicest time of year for trips. I remember them from when I was a child.

we have no videos/dvds AFAIAA

maybe they did them as it has been so rainy?

The children may have voted to watch a DVD. They do in dd3's class. Also one DVD may be watched over as many as three sessions so it may seem like they are watching all week!

i feel teachers get a vast amount of holiday time, far more than any other job i know of. and i don't think it would be too errible to ask that they save any classroom moving to the first week of teh holidays.

my son has been really distressed over the upheavel of everything this last few weeks. ok he is ASD but even so its still very difficult for young children to understand the change.

Well done Malory! That puts us to shame!

On Friday it took 5 TAs 2 hours to clear the staffroom as it is being knocked through to the kitchenette.

One Maths cupboard took 5 TAs and 2 teachers 1 hour to clear for decorating.

Mamazon - schools are at the mercy of contractors being able to do the jobs within the six weeks and can't always be picky. Ours can only come in next week.

I'd like to see some of you give up a week of your holidays to go to work .