Irish v English Primary Teachers/School... Wildly different experiences.

[bunnybabies]

I am a Primary Teacher working in Ireland. I go to work at 910 and finish/leave at 250. If a parent wants to speak to me, they ring the secretary and make an appointment to do so, either by phone or in person.Always during school hours. If a parentt has a grievance, they first speak with me and then if not satisfied arrange another meeting with Principal Teacher and Class Teacher. I am a regular user of MN and am genuinely stunned at the access that parents have to Class Teacher and the school in England, generally.Parents at the school in which I work are not allowed into the building randomly.Again, a meeting is set up if needed. There is no such thing as emailing, social media contact or otherwise outside of working hours. From what I read on here, my experiences in the school I teach in, are wildly different.I am interested to know how things work at your children's school or indeed at your place of work, as a teaching staff member.Thanks.

Yes I too am flabbergasted by the disparity in countries.I adore my job and of course I see that the success of a pupil's education in Pimary schoolis based on the Parent's being the primary educator however, our Principal will not entertain any nonsense from Parents.Everything we do is in the best interest of the child and while we are human and make mistakes at times, he refuses to entertain any horseshit which is wonderfully refreshing.Our previous Principal, because of the priviledged children who attend our school and his own self esteem issues , was almost fawning at times in his quest to appease some pretty ludicrous requests from Parents and of course, it was always the supremely wealthy, famous pupils who 'won' the competitions/awards. I agree though, our Principals and DPs are hugely overworked and underpaid..many teaching Principals.As a friend, who is a superb teacher and classroom manager once said to me...'why would I NOT walk out the door at 250, for the sake of an extra e30 per week, when I can pass queue of angry and frustrated Parents losing their mind over a drop in scores or a drop in the school football team when they are simply not performing.

why would I NOT walk out the door at 250, for the sake of an extra e30 per week, when I can pass queue of angry and frustrated Parents losing their mind over a drop in scores or a drop in the school football team when they are simply not performing

If that’s the extra money SLT get paid, I’m surprised anyone does it!

We are at a great loss that we do have TAs.Our infant teachers spend an inordinate amount of time doing basic activities of daily living befitting of a 4/5 year old, thereby reducing quality teaching time.In fact, we are presently drawing up a list of what each child needs to be able to do before entering school eg opening/closing a lunch box, zipping up a coat, using the toiliets and washing hands,peeling a banana etc.A million miles away from where we were when I started teaching.

I'm a teacher and have many Irish colleagues who are desperate to get back to Ireland and teach but there seems to be a lack of jobs in education, at least in the regions they are looking for. I get to work at 7:30 and work until the children arrive at 8:30. I leave work at 3:30 to beat the traffic but will do all my planning and marking at home. On an average week, I work 60hrs. Parents can message me whenever they want on Class Dojo and I sometimes get ranty messages late at night or on weekends, but I only look at them during school hours. If a parent wants to meet with me, it's in my own time. It sounds like our experiences are extremely different and although I wish mine were more like yours, I do love the job and can't imagine doing anything else.

Do NOT have TAs that should have said.

We have about 12 Special Needs Assistants in our school and they are wonderful .

Thereare absolutley loads of jobs BUT our NQTs are paid shite and their pensions are worse. If you were to move to Dublin your rent may be e1500/2000 per month, whereas down the country where I live, it's still shitty at e1000 per month but doable if on first tier.

One of the oddest things about England is that schools up and down the country have spent the last 2 years rewriting all foundation subject plans (ie topic lessons - history, art etc) and making progression documents to show how the objectives children follow progress from one year group to the next. Following the national curriculum objectives is not enough, and apparently what my school did was no good enough either (according to Ofsted) even though there's no guidance available. It's absolutely crazy that thousands of schools are duplicating the same pieces of work, which in a single school will be taking hundreds of hours. Pretty much sums up teaching in England.

Very few of the classes at my school have class TAs any more due to funding cuts -they only really come attached with funding for children with EHCPs.

What are class sizes like in Ireland?

That shorter day for pupils sounds so much better for young children. Must be difficult for working parents though?

I am envious FoodieToo...We have 1.5 and they dont meet the SN of the kids as there are not enough staff.Our SENT babysits for an hour a day to ensure one pupil doesnt violently assault kids but that's awhole other thread ... Previously our SNAS used to be photocopying and laminating as our secretary was too busy with admin for Principal and treasurer....Go figure.

Our average class size is about 24 . Some as low as 19 . We also have an after school club that runs to half 5 .

Teachers are involved in the after school club if they would like to earn sone extra money .

Bunnybabies we have that number of SNAs because we have many kids with complex needs but in general they are very helpful and willing to assist the teacher.

Our class sizes are one of the highest in the OECD but so are the scores so we are doing ourselves a serious disservice.We go to work, we teach, we impart and we go home.In our school, our Principal has no time for paperwork, monthlys, plans.He wants high quality teaching and high quality empathy.That's the bottom line.When Inspectors come in, we are entirley responsible for our own notes.He wants a copy but doesnt even look at them.He knows he has quality, invigorated teachers.He doesnt subscribe to the paperwork bullshit and has no problem in saying so.

Foodie Too, we need serious admin support but have none whatsoever. You are lucky.

Primary teacher in England here! Never knew there was such a difference with teaching in Ireland!! I get in at 8am and am often last one in (frowned upon by some) and have to park a good 5m walk down the road because I'm 'late'. Doors open to children at 845am and hometime for children is 3:20pm (although after school club runs until 6pm). I tend to leave about 6pm, sometimes 630pm but take very minimal work home (maybe 30min, max a week) and never go in during holidays either - I just don't understand those that do?! Parents catch me on the door in the morning or on the playground after school, or email all day long, or call the office who transfer the call outside of the school hours, or they arrange to meet after school if it'll take longer than 10mins. I had 2 back to back parent meetings a couple of weeks ago that took over an hour and then required logging on the system after that too, it was the week before parent consults too 🥴 parents exhaust me more than the children!

We dont have any childcare options at our school.I know some are dropped to a local club from 7am and can be collected up to 7pm and are dropped and collected to/from our school but not on site, no.I would have loved that for my own children.At the most expensive time of my childcare, I paid a lady to come to mine at seven and leave at fou fprpick ups/drop off r.I travel for work.It was e350 per week.

Irish school use textbooks, as I understand, which is probably a large part of the reason why workloads are so much lower. You don’t have to devise schemes of work, go around on the internet finding stuff and printing it out and creating lessons from scratch, and the same lessons can be reused year after year because textbooks mean you have a set-in-stone curriculum that won’t change much.

The English system of being able to email teachers directly seems bizarre to me. Being forced to go through a secretary is a good way of weeding out pointless time wasting and abuse.

People have to pay for private after schools, crèches, childminders etc or maybe some have family minding children the same they would in the UK but it is a huge expense and there is a shortage of crèche places for babies and younger children so you need to book their place as soon as you know a baby is on the way!

Margo34..that sounds like hell.I remeber my Principal telling me that he was at a football game supporting his son. Totally unrelated to schhol.A Parent of one of the pupils he taught at that time came up and started chatting to him.He was an accountant.. Parent proceeded to ask many questions about his son, sought advice and recommendations, asked for a good word to be put in for his son re a second level school etc.Principal the asked about some tax exemption for a fees or something similar.Accountant told him to drop in for a chat.He did.He was charged e150 for the priviledge. And this is why he is so determined to keep our status as professional. His thoughts are ...if we made small talk on a Doctor/solicitor/accountant etc, we'd be charged, yet the feeling is that a Parent feel they can walk in and take up precious teaching time at their convenience about their child.This is also his strictness on no Parent entering the building ad lib.Our job is to educate the child, not advise,appease Parents.I really admire him.

How does it work with all parent meetings in day time and cover for class? Are there lots of cover teachers or does head cover etc.

Yes we support our teaching with text books.Some school like the one I work in, devise their own when we arent happy with them. Now I will say that many schools in Ireland can be competitive, as in some Teachers like to 'show off' and enjoy/hate the competition with each other but ours is nothing like this.We are a team.

School is closed for PT meetings, as in kids go home at two.We stay on until four for three days or else we do phone meetings right before or right after school.This is once a year.They last 5 minutes unless there's something pressing.eg Johnny is getting on fine, meeting all expectations, behaving beautifully.Any questions.Done.

Op can I ask, as a woman who was in Irish primary in the 90s I’m awaiting inattentive ADHD diagnosis (probably have ASD too) - I was bright but weird and tried hard to mask but didn’t really do it very well. Never fitted in, always in trouble for fiddling, or messing, or nor listening, or being cheeky, or being (inadvertently) rude.

My DS is my little mini me, and we’re hoping to go back to Ireland soon and we’re really lucky where we live that the schools are GREAT. Great picking up of SEN, great child-centred kind of style - not very similar to what I remember, which was very ‘because I said so’ and quite shame-y.

I’’m having a little worry about DS if we go back to Ireland, purely based on my probably long out of date experiences. How much have things changed, in your opinion? Generally how is SEN provision? We’re looking at a village school which is very well thought of in the area, there’d be 10 others in junior infants.