To find school expectations infuriating for working parents?

[JustARegularPoster]

I'm not very well, so I might be being overly sensitive, but my children's school is driving me bonkers with their expectations that parents can drop everything to attend events in the middle of the day.

Are all schools like this?

I know there is probably no answer to this, but the repeated reminders and the "we strongly recommend that all parents make every effort to attend", just makes me feel awful when I can't attend due to... well... working. I only work PT as well, so if something falls on my day off then I will obviously attend, it must be even more of a nightmare for parents that work FT.

The latest of these is an event at 1:45pm on a day I work - and for this one they got my oldest child to hand-write me an invitation, which he'd very carefully coloured in. And he brought him home and very earnestly asked me if I could attend, which I really can't. I thought getting the children to write invites for their parents seemed particularly unfair - and school must surely realise that a lot of parents work and won't be able to make it.

FWIW I do what I can to attend, even if I am working - I take holiday, ask to WFH if possible, or make time up.... but honestly my employers good will only goes so far and I've reached the point now where I'm out of holiday and don't feel like I can ask yet again.

What does everyone else do?

But unfortunately we still need to pay the mortgage and feed them.

Oblivious much?

Attend what you can, and what you can’t, you can’t. We have to work to have a roof over our heads and food on the table.

Don’t forget teachers never get to attend their own children’s school events!

Teacher bashing yet again 🥱

I chose to have children and found a job which works around this fact.

Change your job if you don't like it? 🤷🏻‍♀️

Believe it or not there are lots of parents/ grandparents that can attend and do expect to be involved.

Lol. When do you want me to plan lessons, then?

surely, in the time after school when the event is now not happening. Time management not your speciality?!

That's when you get the joy of marking 90 books a day if you're a primary teacher, or a lovely set of books if you're secondary.

How long do you think that take? At 2 minutes a book, that's 3 hours. A day. Before you plan.

Secondary a set of 32 books at 5 minutes per book (often not enough) is 2.5hrs. Plus planning time then on top.

Your ignorance is showing.

Yep I think it's most primary schools. My son got a golden award last week. We were text on Thursday afternoon about attending the special assembly Friday morning 🙄 I couldn't attend at such short notice as I work in a school. Lucky his dad could attend, then go to work

Yeh our primary school is the same in terms of numerous events around Christmas and Summer at awkward times, except they don't do the guilt trip like yours has, that's shocking!

Well lucky old you hey! Not that easy for everyone... what a ridiculous comment.

I saw quite a lot of their Primary school events as I was either not working or was working in their school but I saw almost nothing in their High school years that didn't happen in the evening and that included Awards ceremonies which were in the afternoon. When our daughter graduated I needed two days because of the timing of her ceremony and had to argue for it.

It’s not teacher bashing, if anything it’s HT bashing. Often the issues are filtering down from them.
My experience is secondary but I can imagine in primary there is very little freedom to arrange anything without approval.

How long do you think that take? At 2 minutes a book, that's 3 hours. A day. Before you plan.Secondary a set of 32 books at 5 minutes per book (often not enough) is 2.5hrs. Plus planning time then on top.Your ignorance is showing

nope. Just pointing out you said you couldn’t stay at school till the godforsaken hour of 6pm to facilitate events because you had to lesson plan. Moving an event an hour or two later doesn’t remove that time from your day. It’s simple physics. The time is still there, you just need to plan differently. H2H

Technically most threads is a bashing thread on whatever subject in one way or another.

Today I've seen job bashing, chelsea boots bashing, salad bashing and weather bashing = maybe it's time to accept that Mumsnet is an online "bashing" forum and thats its purpose on the interwebs? 😃

The school will be pressured for ofsted to hold events for parents to attend and keep on good communication. After my daughter’s school got RI and a new head took over there were suddenly loads of workshops for parents to attend (to learn how to do maths and English particularly) but as a teacher I couldn’t attend myself but then my child always felt sad about it so sometimes I’d send my mum. Usually there were only a handful of parents - or grandparents - that attended these sessions. The workshops were us watching the teacher teach their child a part of a lesson then the kids showing us their work and then us being able to tell the teacher how wonderful a job they were doing!! I do work part time so always try to attend things on my days off and have requested unpaid leave for things that were particularly special but that wasn’t often.

Hand written invitation, that’s ridiculous!

This used to drive me mad. Its horrendously sexist because it requires one parent to constantly take time off work for trivial matters, and seems to revolve around the age-old assumption that the mother stays at home.

Don't get me started on the constant stream of trivial requests such as "Can little Johnny bring an item of clothing in yellow/red/whatever", a Roman emperor costume, 10p for charity, etc etc

Its a lovely idea IF one parent doesn't work. But we all do these days. Its just an extraordinary mental load still carried almost 100% by mums because dads refuse to recognise, acknowledge or fulfil any of this shite.

Even more infuriatingly, ours announce events, and then two days beforehand announce they are happening on a totally different date or time to the one previously circulated.

DS had a speaking part in the school Christmas play. Two performances, one morning and one afternoon, but one open to EYFS and KS1 and the other open to KS2 parents. I cancelled clinics to get to it. Two days beforehand, they announced they were doing the EYFS/KS1 performance on a totally different day. I had a clinic on this other day as well, couldn’t cancel with <8 weeks’ notice, and couldn’t go. Just infuriating.

Haven’t read the full thread but I have always worked FT and have been a single mum for most of my years parenting.
I have gone to every sports day and every Christmas concert and any special award ceremonies (like once a year type awards) then some occasional after school events like summer fayres etc. have never done any other stuff that falls in the working day as I’d have to book leave which I then couldn’t spend with my kids in the actual holidays! So far they don’t seem scarred for life… my mum was a teacher and dad worked away so we never had people there at sports day etc really and I don’t feel traumatised by it!

Wonderful that you can afford it 🙄

Teachers are paid to work 1265 hours per year which is done bed 39 weeks/195 days. They are not paid for their holidays. Their salary for the 39 weeks is paid over the holidays as it is split evenly into 12 equal monthly payments. Oh and those hits equate to about 6.5 hours per day and if you do the calculations you’ll realised that most teachers work more than this to get their planning and marking complete at home or later at school as they’re directed during these hours to teach, attend meetings, run parents evenings, run school clubs etc.

The school I work at rarely (if ever) organises anything within the school day. This is not representative of schools.

So many levels of wrong. 😩 This is why feminism is needed unless we never want parity with men.

Why should one parent have to get a specially flexible job to meet arbitrary and whimsical requests which are not required? 😵‍💫

When did men ever get a job specially tailored to fitting in around their children?

When did anyone question a man's fitness to have children based on his willingness to step down from life to cater to their school's every whim?

Its not teacher bashing. DH is a teacher. He has never personally met a single one of those requirements - he thinks they are a waste of time.

Which they are - except in the eyes of the one child who didn't have 10p, or an orange, or a parent to buy their handmade treasure for charity. My highly paid, high status job didn't permit this sort of dipping in and out of the workplace. Jobs with deadlines, commitments and important knowledge aren't ever going to be flexible enough to accommodate every one of these events.

I nearly gave up work so many times for these reasons. I'd have no pension, no house, no savings, and no ability to pay for my kids to go to uni.

But try telling a 6 year old that. 😭

So when a teacher strikes, the pay deducted is 1/195th of their annual salary per day?

Teachers receive an annual salary, paid monthly. And if they are paid only for 195 days a year their rate of pay is pretty healthy all things considered.