Work set for strike but kids told by teachers not to bother

[WellyBoot12345]

My children’s secondary school is closed tomorrow and some very generic work has been set by, I guess, someone in the senior leadership team. I quite get it that it’s generic stuff and won’t be marked, but children have both said that their teachers have told them they’d rather they didn’t do the work. I’m not happy about this - I don’t have a problem with the strike but school is closed, that’s causing the disruption that the unions need for things to get better … but suggesting to the children not to bother with the work impacts on my children’s learning and attitude to homework. Also seems pretty disrespectful to the person who has gone to the effort of setting it. I’m out at work tomorrow and there was only a slim chance that they would do anything anyway … but now they feel they have permission to do absolutely nothing at all tomorrow and future strike days and I’m the evil mum for saying that they should. AIBU for being peeved about this, and would you say anything to the school? (Or AIBU to believe my pesky kids that the teachers said this??!!)

Strikes are supposed to be inconvenient, that's the point. And drinking tea gets shouldn't be setting or marking work. Non striking teachers shouldn't be taking in striking teachers workload - that's breaking their colleagues strike.

The OECD figures are for teachers’ contracted hours. Schools would fall apart if teacher just worked those hours.

We (Scotland) are a bit further ahead in terms of strike action than England.

When the larger unions (namely EIS) were on strike, schools closed, there was no work provided. Non striking staff attended work as normal, and conducted other non teaching duties.

When the smaller unions were on strike, it was on a case by case basis. Schools could work out how many staff were likely to be available (because they knew who was on strike for the larger strike date) and they either closed, or remained open with amendments.

My daughters school remained open as nobody was on strike.

In my school, we closed to lower school kids, and only had exam years in. If their teacher was available, class was on as normal. If their teacher was not available, senior management supervised the children in the lunch hall, there was no lesson but they were free to work in the school building under supervision.

So do teachers in other countries stick to their contracted hours? Are their contracted hours longer or shorter? I don't know, so I am asking.

I’m in Scotland. I don’t stick to my contracted hours, but I can’t be sacked if I do. Nobody I know does. But we could completely work to rule indefinitely. I can guarantee, the impact would be far, far worse if we did this than sporadic strike days.

I voted YANBU but its not really your fault, it's the SLT and HTs who are sending out mixed messages. Honestly with teacher recruitment and retention the way it is you'd think backing your staff (and being seen to back them) would be a no-brainer.

*because it's not your fault

Non striking teachers should only be planning, teaching or marking for their usual classes. We have specifically been told NOT to cover for our colleagues in any way - goes against the grain as we would usually do exactly that out of goodwill and to help the children. But this time, the goodwill and helping children comes from NOT helping.

Any teachers not striking but with no children in due to school closures or other striking staff should be doing planning, assessment, displays etc. Nothing more. (Except popping down to the picket lines with a cuppa and packet of biscuits around playtime!)

As a parent, I would be sorely tempted to write a very cross email to any headteacher insisting on virtual lessons, pointing out how damaging that is to staff morale and how it undermines a serious attempt to improve conditions in school by campaigning for pay rises to come from government funds, not school budgets. I would also be encouraging my child to boycott those lessons.

My mum used to set me extra work apart from school work in primary. I would hope that by secondary my kids would be self-motivated enough to use the time to do something useful. If in exam years, I absolutely would expect them to be revising. I support the strike, but I don’t think it is a betrayal of the teachers for the kids to work.

Nice try, but that only counted directed hours. When teachers have to be in school. Not all the hours they spend planning and marking outside the classroom.

Other countries have curricula that are taught from workbooks. So far less planning, and easier marking. The teachers might spend a bit more time in the classroom, but far less (if any) working at home. I have teacher friends in various countries, and their total workload is far less than mine was (I'm now retired). They think what's expected of teachers here is insane. And of course they are all paid to teach and nothing else. They're amazed that we end up having to do all the social worker stuff on top.

Teachers in other unions should not be setting work for staff who are striking. All teaching unions have made that clear.

The teachers won't mark it. To be fair they don't mark much at my school since the children self mark and then correct using different coloured pens. It appears to be quite standard at many schools. Then the maths and some other subjects are marked online at the end of the subject test.

Barely a note in my Yr 11 child's books at all. Just his remarks in different coloured pens. They write in black then mark and correct using purple and green pens! Teacher don't do it at all.

Set work is usually something simple and completed quite quickly and more of a there you have something to do than a relevant piece of work!

Why is it beside the point? If you think he'd be better off doing that, then why not?

Non-striking teachers shouldn't undermine their striking colleagues to set cover- this is the advice of all the unions and it's in STPCD.

If the NEU win a big payrise for next year, they won't turn it down, will they...

Kids work hard every day in school, why make them do pointless tasks that won't even be looked at never mind marked so right or wrong g the child will never know or learn from mistake if its wrong so technically they might do the work but haven't learned anything!! Let them have a lazy day there only young once.

work should t have been set, students shouldn’t do it and no one should mark it

My Y10 insists they’ve been told it’s illegal for school to set online work during a strike 🤣

Nice try!

Still. Led to an interesting chat about “scabs”.

No need for the inverted commas- a scab is a scab

So you have zero expectation of your kids to do the work, at home, living by your rules. But you’re outraged at teachers having exactly the same expectations and standards as you. Hypocrite!!

I’ll still choose to use the inverted commas, thank you.

I’m a supporter of the NEU strike, but I also support the right of any individual to make a personal decision to work. Therefore, when using a pejorative term, I’ll use inverted commas to signal that it isn’t my personal opinion on any person who breaks a strike.

Teachers in England and Wales have an insidious clause in our contracts which says we must do as many additional hours as is needed planning, marking etc to "discharge our duties". I don't know if this is the norm in other countries, but the expectation of our contracts is we work well over our directed time.

I know someone who had a contract in FE which specifically paid her for 30 minutes prep/marking for every 1 hour teaching. So for a teacher in a UK school with 25 hours of teaching a week, that's 37.5 hours a week- i.e. a full time job, before you factor in anything like: meetings (school or with parents), CPD, responding to emails, admin tasks, duties, supporting students e.g. through revision sessions etc.

In the last week I've had- 40 minutes scheduled meetings in school, 30 minutes of compulsory CPD, spend probably a bare minimum of 20 minutes a day on emails, sometimes a lot more, about 1 hour on report writing, 1 hour supporting students with catch up. I'm really lucky in my current job I don't have any "duties" but in many jobs that would be another half an hour each week.

So in total that's potentially just over 42 hours this week.

BUT then you have to factor in "occasional" things like parents evenings, open evenings, information evenings, that time a kid has a crisis and you end up staying late, that day when half the department is off so you come in early to help out, twilight CPD, mock marking, that time you end up on the phone to a parent for 30 minutes unexpectedly, trips and loads of other stuff. So that can easily add up to 50 hours a week.

As soon as you add in any additional responsibility or running a major extracurricular, I can see it easily see it becoming well above 50.

I know teachers who teach outside the UK, or in international schools and nearly all of them have way more non-contact time built into their teaching week than the 10% UK teachers get AND a lot of them get paid extra if, e.g., they run a club. Things like after school revision sessions etc also don't happen.

And functional social care/mental health care/social services helps, too.

There’s a bit on LBC this morning about the strikes and it’s infuriating me - the general public is so so ignorant

Teachers have a right to strike. However, if non striking staff (an equally valid choice), choose to set work so that kids don't get behind, it is pretty churlish for the striking ones to tell the kids not to do it.

I don't have a child in school so no direct experience of this, but do parents and teachers really think that it's ok to encourage kids to call school staff derogatory names?

And for some of the work set, isn't it possible that a kid might benefit from doing the work even if it isn't marked?

Yes I will be encouraging my DCs to do some school work. They haven’t been set anything specific but have links to some online learning websites that the school uses - the sort that have a lesson and then a quiz at the end. Or I might get them to watch some science or nature programmes on YouTube. Nothing too full on but I just don’t want them gaming all day. (They are secondary age btw, I think it’s a bit different if you have young kids).

I do find it strange the attitude of if a teacher doesn’t mark it then there’s no point in doing it.

A strike is a withdrawal of labour. No teacher in the striking Union should 'set work' that day. Any member of another union (SLT) should be covering any of a striking teachers work. Anyone doing this is breaking the strike. The strikes are all legal and agreed with local government.

Children at secondary can revise previously covered work or read up on the facts of the teachers/public sector strike. Find out about austerity, government fraud, corrupt covid contracts and look into what inflation is!!!