To not go on the residential?

[Youthiswastedontheyoung]

I've just started a new p/t teaching role. Towards the end of the academic year the whole year group go on a residential which is about 3.5 hours away, for a full school week.
I have a just-turned 4 yo and other academic commitments outside of school.
AIBU to say I can't attend the residential?
As an aside, my mum (love her) thought teachers got paid for any additional hours regarding this. She was surprised to learn I'd just be getting my standard pay!

"Just say no. You aren't getting paid for it, it puts you under a huge amount of unnecessary stress ...Your first priority is your 4 yo"

Thank goodness back to some common sense.
I too have been on weeks of Civil Service residential training (a doddle) but would not choose to go on a residential school trip: it's a completely different level of responsibility. It's sad if people cannot see that. Trips are voluntary especially if you have caring responsibilities at home, and a school should be understanding about that. And you are p/t for a reason. Maybe you'll be able to go when your daughter is older.

The difference being that when those workers are asked to work unsocial hours they aren’t expected to take all their clients with them overnight

Are you kidding me? You don't think nurses and police officers are with clients when they work over their hours?

I've had to take 24/7 responsibility for groups of vulnerable teenagers away from home for several days in two quite different roles (both working for charities though with very different cohorts). Wasn't paid any overtime, and didn't get any time off in lieu. It wasn't a contractual requirement but it was certainly expected that we would just suck it up. In one of the roles, the budget was insufficient too and I ended up supplementing with my own money. And I earned a fair bit less than a teacher's salary at that time!

Lots of jobs put onerous and sometimes unreasonable expectations on their staff. That doesn't make it OK, and if going on residentials isn't a contractual requirement, I think it's fine for the OP to say that she doesn't want to do it. We should all be challenging unreasonable expectations from our employers, and as a leader now, I bend over backwards to ensure that I don't put such expectations on my staff. However, it's irritating when teachers try to suggest that such expectations are unique to the teaching profession. They are not.

Well to be fair, until you've worked in all of our jobs, you haven't a clue how hard it is.

Would you not get the bus that's paid for? That's kind of on you, then.

Lots of jobs put onerous and sometimes unreasonable expectations on their staff. That doesn't make it OK, and if going on residentials isn't a contractual requirement, I think it's fine for the OP to say that she doesn't want to do it. We should all be challenging unreasonable expectations from our employers, and as a leader now, I bend over backwards to ensure that I don't put such expectations on my staff. However, it's irritating when teachers try to suggest that such expectations are unique to the teaching profession. They are not.

As a teacher, I agree with this. I think teachers can become over-sensitive as a result of constant ‘you only work 9-3’; ‘you have endless long holidays’ and thus over-state their case. Unreasonable expectations are unreasonable. Challenging them - politely, and with a solution in mind if possible - can be done without making generalisations that put other people’s backs up.

I can give you an example, OP. A university lecturer will be expected to travel a number of times a year. Salaries range from £34k to £56k, unless in a very senior role.

The bus will go at the beginning, and come back after 5 days. If the OP does only her contracted days - as is reasonable- then she will have to either take public transport one way or take her car both ways. They won’t run a bus just for her!

I’m not saying other jobs don’t work long and difficult hours with high levels of responsibility/stress, I’m just saying a residential in charge of children isn’t the same.

No, it's not the same. No two jobs are. But I would wager that I work considerably harder on my work trips than a teacher on a residential. I get that you are always on call on these things, but I think you are clueless about how hard the rest of us actually work.

Schools are experiencing a recruitment crisis. Perhaps those who are criticising the OP should come and give it a go!

pp mentioned that in their LA (i think that's the term) the teachers are paid extra as part of their retention policy. Sounds like a good policy to me. You should be paid a fair day's wage for a fair day's work.

I'm not a teacher and i do roll my eyes at some of their posts here, but they are vital and we have a recruitment and retention crisis. That can be solved: with investment and so on. The more teachers push back on the extras (like monitoring ribbons on socks or use of jumpers 😜) the more chance there is that their profession will be properly arranged and properly compensated.

FWIW: i used to be in the army. On duty, literally, 24 hours a day. As an hourly rate our pay was shit (even though i was on the highest trade pay) but in the Army you accept that. I have subsequently worked in corporate jobs and where there has been (an often silent) expectation that i leave at insanely early hours and return at insanely late hours, i have said "nope, i will leave my house at the earliest at 7am and i will arrive home at the latest at 6 or 8pm and i will use hotels as necessary and fuck weekend travel unless there is TOIL or other benefit.

Often the other benefits have been (i used to do a lot of long haul travel for work) getting a weekend somewhere cool, or whatever, and that was OK for me, while i accept that other people would have preferred the early/late travel and no overnights.

And, lucky me, i have managed to work for companies that do appreciate my commitment (which is 100% - even on biz trips that could have been an email) and don't push it.

You can have a family and have commitments and be a teacher every teacher I know (7) but one has a family my close relative included. I said consider your family , not don't have one. The reading comprehension on this thread is very poor.

Who taught your friend’s scheduled classes on zoom while she was in with the vulnerable/key worker children? Most of us did both, with days on a road in with those children and teaching our normal classes online on other days, leaving 8n dependent work for days we were physically in school.

Also assuming someone who doesn’t do residentials is doing the minimum, not marking for ages, not prepping is nonsense. Some excellent, committed and very well liked teachers never do trips. Sometimes they do other above and beyond things like productions, lots of clubs and so on.

It wasn't a contractual requirement but it was certainly expected that we would just suck it up. In one of the roles, the budget was insufficient too and I ended up supplementing with my own money. And I earned a fair bit less than a teacher's salary at that time!

tbh @MrsBennetsPoorNerves it is stuff like this that means nothing will change.

Please don't go on about life and death decisions by medics, this is about being available 24/7.

I mean, I've available 24/7 for my kids at the weekends. It's not massively stressful.

I guess you could work one of a multitude of other jobs?

And I guess I would work full time if I couldn't afford to buy a house working part time. Has this never occurred to you?

I am aware of someone who has had clients with 24/7 responsibility in their home for weekends, not paid a cent. It does happen. They could have said no but didn't for their own reasons.

Probably not worth typing this as the response will be 'but it's not 24/7 - kids - vulnerable'.

I'm a PA in private sector. I work extra hours most weeks unpaid. Every few months I organise corporate events. These are abroad, about 4 days long. I work from 7.30am to 11pm on these days. None of this is for any extra pay, and I probably get paid less than most teachers. It's not just management jobs / teaching that have this expectation.

For you OP you're part time and have a young child, so I would say no. You're unreasonable thinking no other job has this kind of expectation though in terms of hours.

Also assuming someone who doesn’t do residentials is doing the minimum, not marking for ages, not prepping is nonsense. Some excellent, committed and very well liked teachers never do trips. Sometimes they do other above and beyond things like productions, lots of clubs and so on.

The correlation between ‘goes on residentials’ and ‘is a highly committed and effective classroom teacher’ is not particularly tight one. (There are ‘passenger’ teachers on residentials too). It is quite simply wrong to assume that a teacher who, for eg family reasons, does not do residentials is in any way a poor teacher in other ways.

Yes, I do understand the defensiveness that arises from the perception that teachers work 9-3 and have loads of holidays. As a school governor, I have a strong interest in issues around staff wellbeing, and I am acutely aware of how much pressure staff are under... even in a school where the HT is very committed to protecting the work life balance of staff.

At a national level, we clearly have a crisis in teacher recruitment and retention, so the balance isn't working for a lot of people as things stand. I'm absolutely in support of teachers seeking to challenge unreasonable expectations and manage the balance between their work lives and their home lives more effectively - I think our kids will get a far better education if their teachers are happy, healthy and not overstretched.

Unfortunately, I think some teachers actually damage their cause by suggesting that they are the only ones who are expected to put in loads of unpaid hours and/or take on significant responsibilities out of hours. It just makes them seem out of touch and ignorant about what goes on in other sectors and it makes people less inclined to give them a sympathetic hearing. I think this is why it irritates me so much, to be honest, because I actually think that there are genuinely valid points that need to be heard but they tend to get lost in the self-pitying presentation which focuses on the perception that teachers somehow have a uniquely unreasonable burden to bear. This doesn't ring true for many of us who have experience of other sectors, and it leads people to dismiss what the teachers are saying.

The fact that people in other sectors are often put under unreasonable expectations doesn't mean that the teachers' complaints are any less valid. Employees in all sectors have a right to challenge expectations that are unfair.

The bus will go at the beginning, and come back after 5 days. If the OP does only her contracted days - as is reasonable- then she will have to either take public transport one way or take her car both ways. They won’t run a bus just for her!

Ah, so you are talking about one bus fare? The school should pay that, I agree.

In fact, I think the OP should check with her school. I wager they would absolutely cover this.

I agree, it won't change unless people challenge it, and they should.

I am afraid to say that I didn't. I don't think I had the confidence to question it at the time, and I just accepted that it was what was expected.

However, I am now in a position to set the expectations for my staff, and I do take great care to ensure that we don't ask people to do the unreasonable.

I was a young TA on a UK residential for year 7’s and a good number of staff would attend the hotel bar every evening and some would get wasted. One night a few pulled an all-nighter and a mixed sex couple who were both in relationships ‘disappeared’ outside in the early hours… There must have been a few ‘on duty’ in case there was and issue with the children but it seemed like a lot spent at least part of the evening when the kids were in their rooms in the bar. This was about 15 years ago so I hope that rules have become tighter.

Well, it may be mileage for a 3.5 hour car journey both ways OR the fare for a long and complex journey by public transport late in the evening (residential sites are usually quite out of the way, and the OP would be travelling after the end of a full working day).

Schools do not - ime - pay for journeys for staff to travel to and from residentials to meet part time contract requirements. Similarly, they don’t pay for staff using cars for school-related journeys eg to sporting fixtures, though ime they do pay for the necessary insurance for staff to carry pupils in their cars to such events.