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.

OP with respect, you work in school less than thirty hours a week, state you do little marking or planning at home, get paid 67k a year (assuming this is a full time salary), yet say you are crying out for TA/admin support 🤔

You forgot about the 15 weeks of holidays a year @RewildingAmbridge😉

Bumping as a friend's daughter is in Mary I doing teacher training. A good teacher in worth every penny. But they often get burnt out.

The useless ones just rip the piss out of the system. Our kids attended primary in both UK and Ireland. When we visited the National School I couldn't believe the unearthly quiet compared to the English school. The kids were so polite and well behaved. It was 100% white Irish in the 90s too.

Whereas in the UK school there were pupils with little English , or with problems at home etc.
Despite this we got detailed reports every term. And it was a happy place which is also important .
In the Irish primary it felt more like box ticking. It was better in strictly academic terms though. 3 Rs still front and centre. I worked in a petrol station near 2 schools and they'd be filling their cars up at five to three. Only ever noticed 1 book in a teacher's car : The Thorn Birds.

My friends daughter says gender woo has not arrived in Mary I , its still very Catholic if anything. In sum if you want to teach primary Ireland is a great place. It's the only sector where the 1970s never stopped.

I’m sorry for your friend’s daughter if she thinks Irish primary schools are anything like what they were in the 1970s. I went to a primary school in the 1970s and I taught in a primary school in the 2020s and I can assure you that they bore little resemblance to each other, from curricular content/student makeup/workload for teachers/attitudes to learning aspects. I started my teaching career in the mid 1980s and in the 37 years that I spent teaching, the job at the end bore very little resemblance to the job when I started. However, my mother (also a teacher) agrees that the only real differences during HER career were a) a much nicer building and b) the introduction of the 1971 curriculum.

Only ever noticed 1 book in a teacher's car: The Thorn Birds

What does that prove though?!

I am a prolific reader but don’t leave my books on the passenger seat of my car…

She wasn't even born then 😂. I was making a tongue in cheek reference to the conditions- and pay - compared to their UK counterparts.

I'd advise any intelligent young person to consider teaching as a career.

You'd expect an odd book on the parcel shelf though? The Thorn Birds was exceptionally popular back then. I wonder what it would be nowadays.

Fifty shades of Grey?

This is much more my experience as a teacher in lreland. I would very seldom leave before 4 and often later. I am rarely the last to leave. And we regularly see parents after school for a chat. And we always give an accident note and see the parent after school to discuss any injury.
I work in Special Needs in a Primary School and it definitely depends on how much experience the teachers in that section have when dealing with the various needs. Some schools are better than others.

Interesting discussion. I am on a Facebook page for British teachers who are looking to exit teaching and the stories on how they are treated are truly shocking. I had a friend who taught in the UK and returned to Ireland after suffering a breakdown. She was in at 7am every morning. Stayed til 7pm and worked weekends too. And still could not keep up with the demands placed upon her.

I am an Irish teacher and agree it is a rewarding job. I find if I spend a day or two planning over the summer once I find out what class I have, I can manage to do a good job by working approximately 8:30 to 3:40 (pupils are in 9am til 2:40). I usually don't have to bring work home.

I was deputy principal for many years and made the move to principalship. I am making approximately 40 euro more a week after tax. I teach four days a week full time. I actually have two classes so a lot of planning in terms of differentiation and one day in the office doing admin. I have realised it is essentially doing two jobs. The school has no caretaker and a secretary for 10 hours a week. I was working 60 to 70 hours minimum a week and never getting to the end of the to do list. I have decided to walk away from it. Life is too short. I am going to go back to teaching without the leadership. There is no step down facility for principals so I will have to resign my job and go job hunting this summer. Scary as it will take some years to get a permanent position but not as scary as staying on as principal to the detriment of family life and my health which unfortunately suffered this year.

I think being a principal in a larger school where it's a full time job is probably okay. Being a principal in a smaller school where you have to combine teaching with the leadership role is an impossible job. And yes, teaching two or more classes, which is standard in smaller schools, makes things even more difficult. And I can't understand why smaller schools only have part-time secretaries too. It's insanity as far as I'm concerned.

Good luck with your job hunting @ThaQuilomum.

Wow! I'm returning to Ireland in Jan to teach. I've been teaching in NZ for 6 years and it sounds so similar to England.

Your principal sounds fantastic. Can I work in your school?? 😆

Friend recruits teachers, usually heads or senior staff for schools in south of England.
Has an agency. She’s from N.Ire where there’s apparently a surplus of very well trained teachers so she’s been trying to recruit for teaching posts in England.

says it’s a nightmare! She gets to the point where a bunch of teachers come over to visit some schools in a local authority to see what they’re like, and the Irish teachers are like - No way, this is a shitshow! - despite offers of golden handshakes, more senior roles etc.

They run off back home again, with the exception of a few who see it as some kind of character building experience...

Delighted to hear this. We need teachers! Desperately!

Irish parent here. Don't understand why English primary schools don't have textbooks - is it a cost thing? Presume you have textbooks in secondary though?

I think somewhere along the line it was decided that using textbooks in primary was really lazy teaching and not appropriately differentiated (though even that word has gone out of favour now and we can’t use it!). Far better, obviously, to have primary teachers spending hours individually planning lessons each day, writing endless worksheets, deciding on the phrasing of learning objectives, printing off the selection of worksheets and sticking them in books.

I miss textbooks…

@Shinyandnew1 until this academic year (when the gov started paying for the books) I (along with all the other parents in Ireland) paid about 100-120 euro per primary child per year for books (inc a contribution to a rental scheme where the school bought some books and rents them each year).

My daughter is in the last year of primary and has a text book and a workbook (that the kids write the answers in) for most subjects - so English Irish Maths History and Geography/science combined and religion.

Paying for the books is a big political issue due to affordability and the waste of binning the workbook at the end of the year. And the publishers make a fortune by changing the editions every year or so, so they can't be passed down.

But having said that I can't imagine school without the books and teachers having to prepare the material as well as teach it. Seems like such unnecessary duplication (obvs not a teacher so clearly not qualified to comment!) but surprised none the less.

No wonder you are working hours are crazy!

I live in a country where schools always use textbooks and I am also a massive fan. It doesn’t stop teachers adapting lessons in the way they want, but it does mean that lessons cannot so easily fall below a certain basic standard: if flu sweeps through the area and the PE teacher had to teach Science, they could at the end of the day just go through the next bit in the textbook and it might not be super exciting but at least the kids would learn the content.

When teachers do not have to spend so much time on lesson planning, it frees up a lot of time for them to spend on helping out kids who are struggling or failed to understand a particular point in the curriculum, which makes it easier to keep all the kids on track.

It provides a proper way for kids to revise stuff they have learned, look ahead to what will be studied next, and go over stuff at home once again if they didn’t get it the first time.

The whole “But textbooks go out of date all the time!!” Is largely bollocks. I’m sure science continues to make strides at the cutting edge all the time. But the basic facts of the water cycle as studied by a 12yo don’t alter much over the decades, and certainly not year to year. The relative immoveability of textbooks is, however, a way of making sure that the curriculum does not end up fluctuating this way and that each year according to the latest educational fad or “issue de jour,” and frankly that is a very good thing. I don’t want my kids doing a bunch of random and not-very-well-thought-out lessons on the Palestinians or BLM or what-have-you because someone at the school in charge of curriculum planning has decided that they think this is relevant or something.