NOT TEACHER BASHING but do why do teachers have to do hours of planning every day?

[mostwonderfultime]

If the syllabus is the same every year which it is, do you not just use planning from previous years?
I'm sure I'm being naive but just read this on another thread.

@TabbyMumz

And to be clear, I have never said the job of a teacher is easy, just calling out the "I work till midnight marking" and work much harder than everybody else rubbish. (For primary).

Why do you keep differentiating 'for primary' like it's easier? And you seem quite fixated on marking.

The year I never wanted to teach at school was Reception. God they work hard down there. Not much marking, but the skill and time required to make the environment rich and allow the learning to happen through play can be mind-bending when you see someone really brilliant doing it. The preparation side of it all is massively time consuming.

It's really not: volume of work produced in lesson for marking = workload.

If you have 30 friends who all have birthdays you do not buy them the same gift, you buy 30 different gifts that are specific to what they each like.

Well teaching is the same, you may teach one lesson but you have to tailor it specifically to 30 different people, with all their needs and different levels included. Not to mention the ones who have been off so need to catch up.

Now imagine buying 30 different gifts every single day and only being given one hour of paid work to do it in

TabbyMumz

For the hundredth time be specific in your posts.

Teacher is to generalised. hopefully people will start to realise that.

@CallmeAngelina the OP did pop back, sounded quite genuine really. Sadly there’s plenty of others piling in to bash away.

Tabby, who has said that they are working until midnight every night? I suspect staff working in Special Measures schools or some Academies would. And they burn out quickly. I'm lucky as my Head is genuinely concerned for staff wellbeing.

However, I absolutely did work to midnight and beyond when I did my PGCE and NQT years. I also had two small preschool children and spent 2 years with very little sleep on pure adrenaline. Hideous.

I'm much more experienced now and my work cut off is 10pm. For my own sanity.

However, I get to school at 7:30am, leave at 5:30 most days. I also do approx 2 hours per night and Sunday afternoons so yes, easily upwards of 50+ hours a week on average. More at reports or SATS time, slightly less in July.

I'm curious as to why you want to know all this though. Even OFSTED wouldn't give so much of a toss about hours as you seem to...

[quote CarrieBlue]@CallmeAngelina the OP did pop back, sounded quite genuine really. Sadly there’s plenty of others piling in to bash away.[/quote]
It is astoundingly naive to start a thread like this at a time like this.

@TabbyMumz

No cardibach, we are talking primary, not secondary. Teachers have said they are marking 90 pieces of work a night. Many have said 3 pieces of work a day, maths, English, spelling, and other subjects less often, once a week maybe. 3 pieces of work a night per child. That means 15 pieces of work a week per child. But that level of work isnt evident in school books. We see school books at school, not the ones they bring home. They are there for parents to see All of them.

If your children haven’t done 15 pieces of Marla key work in a week across 10 subjects, then I agree their school is a bit rubbish. Primary or secondary makes no difference. Primary teach the same classes 10+ subjects, secondary teach one subject but more classes. All teachers teach (and therefore need to mark) the same number of lessons

Markable not Marla key!

The year I never wanted to teach at school was Reception. God they work hard down there. Not much marking, but the skill and time required to make the environment rich and allow the learning to happen through play can be mind-bending when you see someone really brilliant doing it. The preparation side of it all is massively time consuming.

Oh god yes.

Most teachers only have to back some boards, label the books, arrange the table etc to get their classroom ready.
In Reception you have to make eleventybillion resources, spend loads of you own time (and often money) buying stuff, set you your room with book corners/role play areas/writing areas/maths areas, the wet indoor area, the sand pit, the water tray, the outdoor sheds, the large play areas..........

And after that they’ll ignore it all and trash it.

@TabbyMumz

FrippEnos...for the hundredth time, I'm talking primary. That means I'm not talking secondary. I'm in absolute awe of what goes on in Secondary.

What, because Primary teachers just play all day and are shit?

I think that if Covid-19 has shown us anything, it's how hard it is to inspire and teach children. Why else are people getting so shouty about schools opening?

"Why do you keep differentiating 'for primary' like it's easier? And you seem quite fixated on marking."
I'm talking about primary because I want to. I'm not fixated on marking, I'm simply talking about marking.

My husband is a teacher so I'll break down those 55 hours for you.

• He gets into work at 7.30 because there are briefings and printing and things like that. School finishes at 3.30 so that's 40 hours per week.
• He coaches school rugby until 5 on two days each week, and then has to wait for the kids to change and leave and put things away so leaves around 5.45 on those two days. So that's an extra 4.5 hours.
• Then he has to do admin type stuff for his form group like checking and writing reports, following up on incidents and phoning parents, talking to other staff and students where there are issues, etc - give that two hours minimum.
• He teaches for around 25 hours per week with around 25 kids in each class. If it takes him just one minute to mark the work that each child did in that class, that's still over ten hours of marking. Just one minute per class per child per week. Obviously it takes more than one minute to mark any homework or exercise book.
• We haven't even started on lesson planning and we're above the 55 hours you've stated.

Oh and quite unusually, I've taught in both Secondary & Primary. The workloads for both are similarly insane. The fact a child is younger has no real bearing on the workload generated for teaching that age...it's different is all.

"The year I never wanted to teach at school was Reception. God they work hard down there. Not much marking, but the skill and time required to make the environment rich and allow the learning to happen through play can be mind-bending when you see someone really brilliant doing it. The preparation side of it all is massively time consuming."

I agree, it's an absolute skill.

Unfortunately TabbyMumz children attended a shocking primary school where they did hardly any work at all. It has clouded her perception of everywhere else.

and work much harder than everybody else rubbish. (For primary).

I have never seen a post where a teacher says they work much harder than everybody else.

It is astoundingly naive to start a thread like this at a time like this.

Or deliberately malicious, given the regular procession on these threads.

*of not on

"19:13FrippEnos

"TabbyMumz

For the hundredth time be specific in your posts."

I have been very specific. To the point where people have said I am fixated. I think it would be hard to be fixated on a topic but also non specific. Wouldny you agree. I think you may have missed that I've said several times that I am talking primary. Simply because I only look on in awe at secondary, whereas I know an awful lot about primary.

Its interesting that the uk syllabus changes completely every year. I have loads of teacher friends and family (not uk), and the consensus is that the first 3-5 years are hard, then its easy going...

@TabbyMumz

FrippEnos...for the hundredth time, I'm talking primary. That means I'm not talking secondary. I'm in absolute awe of what goes on in Secondary.

I teach secondary. I absolutely couldn’t teach primary. I’m in awe of that. It’s not that there’s more work or less work. It’s different work. We all teach the same number of lessons and therefore have to plan and mark them.

@TabbyMumz
I haven’t seen anyone suggest they work until midnight.

Occasionally I do if I have a deadline. My cut of these days is generally 9pm. As an NQT, midnight was more common, but probably not regular.

My time in school varies but I’m never later than 7:40 as I teach younger children, and I need at least an hour to prepare the morning lessons.

@TabbyMumz

Its a long thread I admit that I may have missed it.

It's funny, my dept and I often joke about the lessons we did when we first started and the lessons we do now.

My subject changes slightly compared to others and I look back at lessons I delivered 10 years ago and lessons I deliver now and they are poles apart. Like in many other jobs you are constantly refining your skills and I would hope that enthusiastic and dedicated teachers would want to keep changing up their lessons to suit their new groups.

You teach to the group and the individuals that are in it not wheel out the same lessons year on year...

Tabby, who has said that they are working until midnight every night

"My final year was 6am to 7.30am (then deal with my kids, get to work) 3pm-5:35 pm (mainly meetings, phoning parents, bureaucracy and if I was lucky, marking) Pick DCs up at 5:55pm vegetate, make dinner, bedtime routine then back to work 9pm-12am (planning and marking). Plus more catching up on marking in the holidays as there simply weren't enough hours in the day to keep up with marking policy"