Mari80 I completely sympathise.
I don't know what made me do it but after a tiring afternoon, I looked up Teachers' conditions of work. Under https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/ I found:
- Overarching rights
52.1. No teacher may be required to work on any Saturday, Sunday or public holiday unless their contract of employment expressly provides for this (for example in the case of teachers at residential establishments)
and just to clarify:
Guaranteed planning and preparation time
52.5. All teachers who participate in the teaching of pupils are entitled to reasonable periods of Planning, Preparation and Assessment (PPA) time as part of the 1265 hours, referred to in paragraph 51.5 or pro rata equivalent (as the case may be) to enable the discharge of the professional responsibilities of teaching and assessment.* *
PPA time must be provided in units of not less than half an hour during the school’s timetabled teaching week and must amount to not less than 10% of the teacher’s timetabled teaching time.
(Me; currently Unions are saying it needs to be 20%. I certainly spent at least as much time planning, preparing, marking, and writing up records and reports as I did on Pupil contact time - i.e. teaching. If you add up all the non-contact school related work it vastly out-times the actual teaching and is why I left (such as Parents' evenings, CPD, meetings, and endless other things like coming in to clear the pond, going on a swimming pool maintenance course in my own time, the School Fete, all the Christmas things in the evenings, music meetings on Saturdays, painting the school on Saturday, shopping for essentials for my teaching...)
'A teacher must not be required to carry out any other duties during the teacher’s PPA time'
my bold on last bit
larkstar My sympathies too. Glad you got out. I started writing how standards have dropped in the years since I was at school. I wiped it off thinking it seemed too much of a rant. But it's true. I am old, have taught Reception through to University. Each 5 yrs I reckon the standard drops. What infants learned in 'sums' and punctuation, now Uni students can't do. I know, I had to teach them.
The problem is at the top. Not the teachers, not the Head or £100,000 a year Principal. It's government policy and Teachers' pay and the standard required of Teachers at entry. Pay enough, get the best graduates, do random Inspection visits (I worked with the Inspectors), support, weed out, improve and make the children proud of their school. Support good Teachers and give them access to ask for help. Also where pupils prevent other pupils from learning, they must be put in another, appropriate environment, after assessing their problems and needs. I have seen whole classes' standards drop because one special needs student was proudly maintained in the class by the school where the Head felt it was good to let this child 'be himself among the other children'. The children were with him from Reception until they left Primary school. They could not put capital letters after a full stop.