State school teachers moonlighting as private tutors during their 'working' hours

[UmbrellaHat]

Should be sacked
www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/state-school-teachers-moonlighting-private-22303681

Loads of teachers tutor. It's what keeps me afloat. My only obligation is to let my school know that I tutor and not to tutor anyone who attends the school. And to pay tax on earnings, of course. The school doesn't own me 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, FFS.

@redhair23 there is no obligation on you as the 'consumer' to give a thought to the contractual obligations (or not) of the tutor.

As long as teachers have been fulfilling all their obligations to their school and pupils I see no problem with them providing some private tuition in school hours.

Any particular reason why the Daily Mail sting just happened to approach teachers with non-English names? Or that the £95/h on the headline actually translated into £35 in the feature? Or that it happened to be announced by political organisations?

It's as though somebody in politics approached them with an exact brief.

There are different safeguarding rules for tutoring than there are for schools re Zoom so that bit is a red herring.

There is also nothing to say these teachers are not doing online lessons anyway : I doubt many who weren't confident in that would suddenly tutor via Zoom.

If they are doing this during their normal working hours and their school finds out, they will be disciplined. It's non story.

If it's outside working hours, there is no issue.

I don't see the problem as long as their school hours are complete.
If they were sacking off live teaching to do this obviously not, but they can mark/feedback/write lessons in the evenings and weekends just as easily.

I'd love to see the same level of outrage in the other direction in normal times - teacher spends £35 on ink cartridges for work! Teacher misses free time due to working evenings and weekends! Teacher misses time with own dc doing unpaid revision classes after school!!

@MitziK

Any particular reason why the Daily Mail sting just happened to approach teachers with non-English names? Or that the £95/h on the headline actually translated into £35 in the feature? Or that it happened to be announced by political organisations?

It's as though somebody in politics approached them with an exact brief.

I wondered this too:

Damn. I thought that was going to read 'superheroes'.

It may be in breach of their contracts, in which case their employer is within their rights to discipline them or sack them, but I don't see why it's 'greedy' or indeed morally reprehensible if they are fulfilling all their obligations in terms of the distance learning the school wants them to provide.

Even if they need to be available online to help pupils during their normal lesson times, there is in theory no practical reason why they couldn't do tutoring during free periods if that were allowed by their contract.

so how come they can't do zoom lessons for their state pupils?

Because that is their school's policy, not because individual teachers have decided they can't.

Gosh, doesn't quite fit with the "we're on our knees!" narrative, does it?

Gosh. It's not a narrative. Some teachers are on their knees, many are not. Unsurprisingly, it depends on their school's distance learning policy and indeed the individual teacher's contracted working hours. Some schools have not been doing much. That is not the decision of individual teachers.

Depending on the nature of the home learning set, is this necessarily a problem? Lots of teachers do tutoring in the evenings in normal times so if the home learning was of the pre-recorded kind, then they could prepare that during the evening hours and do a couple of hours tutoring during the day. It would be a problem if there was some part of their home learning duties (policies are set by the school, not the individual teachers) that they were not fulfilling because they were doing the tutoring instead.

If they tutor during school hours and the do their 'normal school work' in the evening what is the problem?

Some teachers are parents who are home-schooling during the day and doing their own school work in the evening. Should they be disciplined for doing something else during 'school hours'?

YABU. I doubt hundreds of teachers are doing this during their contracted working hours. If there are some, then they should be disciplined of course. I cannot imagine this is actually a widespread issue.

Teacher Tapp data showed that some schools had specified that their teachers needed to be working between 9-3 and others had given a bit more flexibility, in acknowledgement of other commitments like childcare. So long as the work was being done, they didn’t specify when it should be done.

Depends entirely on their contract and whether they’ve declared the extra income. I don’t know of any teachers who do this though. School days are normally very busy so it would be unusual to find time for this, unless you were doing your own work out of hours I suppose.

As usual, people who don't have a bloody clue about schools or teaching just hear the klaxon and blunder into the thread to join in with the latest bit of anti-teacher crap without actually thinking about whether it makes any real sense.

A Department for Education spokesperson said: ‘Teachers can’t take on additional contracts of work for any time they are required to be available for work with their school

There you go. That’s from the linked Daily Mail article.

You’d need to ask individual heads when during the school day they required staff to be available.

Wasn’t the post from the daily mirror?

In any event I don’t have a problem with it, to be honest.

Supply teachers have been really struggling so many will have needed to consider tutoring as a source of income. I would imagine the vast majority involved in tutoring are retired/supply/part-time. I think this is a complete non-story, full of gossip and lies. No wonder the country is in the bloody state it's in when people believe the nonsense printed in the Daily Fail without even bothering to question it or demand sources.

otterlielovely

Yes it is, but it references a DMail “sting” which is linked to in the Mirror article.

It’s really greedy

Why is it really greedy? They have a skill set that people are happy to pay for - how is it different to anyone that provides a professional service? I know many people who have a full or part time job and also works privately in a range of professions. As long as you aren’t breaching your employment contract surely it’s fair enough if you have time and energy to top up your earnings?

And the problem with this is....

Oh maybe it doesn't fit with the lazy teachers laying around not doing anything idea?

I was wondering : where is the evidence that there aren't also private teachers doing the same thing? Or would people not froth sufficiently about this?

@Jellycatspyjamas it's considered 'really greedy' because parents are used to and now expect teachers to do masses of school related work at home for free and out of the goodness of their hearts.

I dont know how they'd have the time. I certainly don't.

My friend teaches in secondary, and has a regular tutoring slot on a Saturday morning with a pupil from a different school.

I teach in FE, and regularly do writing work for our exam body at weekends.

Both of us had to get permission from our main employers to do this. I get taxed directly on what I earn, I am not sure how it works for my friend. We were doing this long before Coronavirus.