To refuse to give up time to help kids catch up?

[PeachyM]

So I’m a teacher. And we’re nearing the end of the school year- finally :) Two kids from the same family but in different years disappear off for a two week family holiday, which hasn’t been authorised. I’m not going to particularly question their parents’ decision because it’s up to them. But they’ve come back having missed two weeks of a core subject and the parents have now requested we give up time to help catch them up. I’ve said no because I already have a shit ton of end of year stuff to finish and I don’t have the time. Parents have accused me of being unreasonable and said that I’m refusing to do my job. Who’s in the wrong here?

"They let school know, request work before they go"

And who, exactly, do they expect to take the time to plan and resource this work?

Complete CF's that I wouldn't be entertaining.

I would also bring the child's behaviour in class to the YH.

No way would I tolerate such disrespectful behaviour.

You are being totally reasonable OP.

Educaton is a priviledge and a comittment.
Teachers are under valued and underpaid.
It's hard enough to look after a couple of children as parents- as a teacher you have an enormous task.
In order to deliver the best educational experience boundaries have to be set and adhered to.
It needs a comittment from school staff, children and parents.
Having a laissez faire attitude to time off school, lateness etc is unacceptable.

If anyone is refusing to do their job it's the parents, No teacher should ever have to waste time on children who are missing school for any justifiable reason, let their parents pay for a tutor. I used to get fed up with children whose parents demanded 'holiday work' and then got arsy when I asked for it on their return!

People don't realise how incredibly pressed for time teachers are. A PP suggested just emailing a parent. If I have a 6 hour day of classes, I might have one free. Sending an email to a parent might take ten minutes between checking facts, resources etc... I then only have 50 minutes to correct and organise the 20 other things I have to do. Obviously I will try and email when requested but it does impose upon my time. Photocopying extra work etc? Forget it. No time. My priority is teaching my classes, correcting their work and everything pertaining to that. Unfortunately there's no time to fanny about accomodating requests on top of that. After school in the evening, I will still be attending to those main tasks. Parents evenings, meetings and everything else pushes the teacher to the limit. I also have my own family. I teach over 200 students. It's impossible to attend to individual requests from parents of those students.

I’m a parent (not a teacher) and the parents are being totally unreasonable. I have asked my teacher for any materials which might be useful whilst my child is sick (and possibly might ask if we took them out of school for a holiday) but would have absolutely no expectation that the teacher would spend their time assisting them to catch up (or that they would have time to send me anything tbh). Why would the SLT take the parents view when it’s an unauthorised absence?

In response to some of the suggestions here- I think some well-meaning parents really underestimate the amount of time it takes to complete some tasks. Two minutes to send an email with the topic lists? No because they’ll need a breakdown of everything that they’ve done in class, which can be heavy especially in KS4.

Leoismybae please be assured that many of us parent do appreciate your workload, and want to support you. I can imagine that being a teacher is a huge task. Many parents support the amazing work you do.

Expecting you to give up your free time with no compensation is unbelievable. I wonder what they do for work and if they'd be happy to give up their breaks for free for something that someone else chose to do?

Thia. It's what we were expected to do at school.

I’m thinking that your subject is something like maths or science and they have missed 2 weeks on introduction to quadratic equations or one of newtons laws or similar and without the basics knowledge they are struggling to access higher level questions.
To be honest the parents shouldn’t have chosen to to go away in term time in year 10 there was always going to be a chance they would miss something critical. They are being very unreasonable if they are now expecting you to do catch up sessions in your break/lunch time or after school.
However I suppose it’s not the child’s fault as their parents chose to go on holidays so perhaps you could consider what you would do if the child was off due to illness.

I would never dare to ask a teacher to do this!

Also who takes their kids out in year 10? Surely everyone knows that is an essential year?

As others have said above recommend a tutor.

If they complain about you in class, I think I would speak to them in class about how that is not acceptable to speak about you in that way and sanction according to school policy. Respect is key and perhaps not being modelled by their parents?!

The parents should pay for a tutor if they are that worried about it.

Nope. One of the poorest schools in one of the most deprived parts of the South East. One of my colleagues once commented on how she found it strange that such poor kids managed to develop such entitled attitudes (snobby as it may sound, that kind of entitlement is normally the preserve of the boarding school crowd).

I am not au fait with secondary, but don’t staff do duties at break, supervise wet breaks and pack up one lesson and get resources out for next lesson? I imagine coffee and snack time is incredibly rare? And break time might even be unpaid?

Give them the packets you would give to a child off with covid.

Job done. Ball firmly in their court.

When my child missed 2 weeks in year 10 and more in year 11, I was surprised by how little they actually missed and how quick they covered the lessons themselves with a friend telling them the topics, cgp books and bbc bite size. They need to use those resources. Some teachers did provide a rough lesson plan for each lesson which was helpful.

I don't understand the problem to be honest.

The parents are being unreasonable to ask for any special extra lessons out of a teachers own time, of course.

But surely any decent school/teacher has a policy or procedure in place for what happens when a child misses two weeks of school.

This can't be an isolated incident. Has no child in Y10 ever had chickenpox? Bad dose of covid? Close family member die meaning several weeks off school?

What is usually done to catch them up? Being a GCSE year and all, I'm sure there must be something and you don't just leave them to flounder and fail?

Whatever is usually done, do that. And explain to the parent and kids that xyz needs to be done for them to catch up on missed work.

If you treat these children differently because you disagree with the reason for their absence then yabu. You don't get to make that call. Just treat them the same as any other time it's happened, following the process you'd usually follow 🤷🏻‍♀️

How you might address unavoidable absence is going to be different from help you'd offer if the parents choose to withdraw their child for a holiday.

I would suggest your parents follow the complaints policy because as a governor, if it eventually landed on my desk they would get very short shrift and a lecture from me about why we warn parents every term about taking children off on holidays.

If they want their children to catch up then I suggest that they find a tutor who would be willing to take care of them at their expense.

I doubt they missed much in 2 weeks that they can’t easily catch up with.

I’m in Ireland so I’m not sure what ages you’re talking about but I’m guessing
yr 10 +5 = 15yrs?

Can’t you give them a list of the topics missed so that the parents can employ a tutor if they don’t think they can manage it themselves? Surely all the notes required are available in the textbooks?

Secondary schools finished the end of May here so you rarely get children taking holidays in term-time but it’s not usually a big deal if they do. It’s a national curriculum so everyone learns the same stuff so as a parent, it’s pretty easy to keep on top of what needs to be done.

Have these parents approached other subject teachers with a similar request and have they perhaps acceded,so the expectation is that you would do the same? SLT need to deal with this one;pass it straight on to them,and they can also deal with the pupil who is giving lip in class.

The powers-that-be need to have a definite and consistent policy on this kind of thing,and it needs to be written into the Home-School agreement so that the consequences of unauthorised holiday absence are fully understood.Individual teachers should not be approached and placed in this awkward situation to start with.

A PP suggested asking for work before going away.I can't tell you the number of times I set 'Holiday Work' for pupils and it was never done.

God I don't know how teachers keep a straight face. Why not give them the middle finger and tell them that you're just following the example of the Education Secretary?