Teachers given lie-ins and extra days off

[LaughingPig]

The Guardian is reporting today that state schools are offering perks in an attempt to attract and retain teachers. These include lie-ins, whereby teachers will start later one day a week, a day off each fortnight and even the chance to work from home.

Clearly there is an issue with getting enough high-quality teachers into the profession and keeping them there. However, I’m not sure how these initiatives will go down with taxpayers on the back of successive teachers’ strikes, schools closing for months during lockdown and now inflation-busting pay rises.

Would you be happy with your DC’s teacher arriving to school late after a relaxing lie-in or logging on from home?

YABU- teachers deserve lie-ins
YANBU- teachers should be in class teaching DC

Link

Your DH is obviously not busy enough if he's spending his day counting cars. What a sad little man.

Presenteeism for the sake of it isn't important. In any job. Lots of jobs are taxpayer funded. What do you suggest the country does about attracting and retaining good quality/any teaching staff when the parents they have to deal with would begrudge them a bit of lesson planning in their PJs to miss a boring, pointless meeting on the odd day?

I don’t object to teachers having extra perks to try and retain them, but I don’t think any of this will help. It’s a sticking plaster over a gaping wound. It won’t address the fundamental problems in our education system that are causing teachers to leave in great numbers and why so many are suffering with stress and needing to be signed off.

Jesus wept! You canNOT be for real! Seriously, get a life OP 🙄🙄🙄

This illustrates you know so little about the amount of work teachers do. Maybe if you shadowed a teacher for a week you might appreciate them more.

It’s not about “what’s a good look for teachers” it’s about getting high quality people into teaching. I would prefer high quality teachers x4 days a week than whatever the situation is now (burnout, stress & sickness)

Our car park clears after school as the TAs and support staff leave.I walk so no car.Two other teachers walk.Another teacher cycles.

This is just like my school. The support staff drive out of the car park shortly after the school day ends. Loads of our teachers don’t drive-two go together, some are collected by husbands as they have no car, some cycle and some run/walk. That doesn’t mean they a rent in the building.

Or are you looking in classroom windows as well, OP.

Your DH needs to get a life/spend more time working if he does this everyday.
Also if he is counting zero cars in the car park he may need to go back to school for his counting proficiency.

What kind of hard work are these parents doing if they are noticing teachers curtains drawn during the week?
What do you see as "working for their wage"? Just working long hours, or doing a good job teaching children?

Totally agree @LaughingPig , it's getting a little ridiculous now. I remember during the strikes an ex-head teacher turned senior rep came on the radio and said she believed a pay rise would do little to attract/ retain, and that actually tackling issues such as poor behaviour, discipline and abuse from pupils, and excess pressures from Ofsted, would see far greater results than another pay rise. But I think handing out perks to the detriment of already under resourced schools is not the answer.

Any improvement for teachers conditions basically have to be cost neutral as its clear there isn't an appetite for hugely increasing funds for education or the supporting services.

So on that basis being able to do PPA at home seems like a win.

I don't see the problem- if they are contracted to start at a certain time and they are present for that time there is no issue.

They probably wouldn't be having a lie in and have other things to do but even if they were, it's nobody's business what any employee does with their own personal time as long as the job is done and they fulfil their contractual obligations. Nobody would question what people in other professions are doing in their non-contracted time.

Not sure why it matters whether planning and marking is done at home or at school as long as it's done?

Secondary is a bit different because teachers there often have 'free periods' above and beyond the 2.5 hrs PPA.
No they don’t @Blantyre

‘Free’ periods are actually the teacher’s PPA - it just gets split up into hour blocks so would be harder to schedule for them to WFH. It’s very many years since teachers taught for fewer than the maximum lessons to allow for PPA.

You can be as unhappy about this as much as you want. Fact is nobody wants to do the job anymore so incentives need to be offered. Pay more or improve conditions or both. Teaching should be a really competitive profession so our DC get the best possible education from excellent teachers.

If being a bit more flexible with teachers means my kids keep their bloody good teachers, rather than loosing them in droves as they have been, then I'm all for it.

There's no reason teacher's admin should all have to be done in school.

My DD's HT has a very good HT who puts staff welfare very high. She's one of the best I've ever seen (20 years working in schools) at dealing with parents and not landing everything on staff. DDs teacher had a day off recently as her sister was getting married. The staff retention in that school is vastly better than any other school I know because, despite the stresses, the teachers feel valued and looked after

They alway live near a school where the car park is empty at 4pm. Always.

I am fucking delighted with the way the polling is going.

I would urge anyone who has a problem with this to please sign up to the profession and help the teacher retention crisis.

And they have the right to take industrial action too.

Belated but … are you f-ing kidding? Can you point to a single teacher who works ONLY their contracted hours? The job simply can’t be done in those hours and kids would suffer if teachers worked to rule.

To put t in to perspective, the vast majority of Civil Servants are not in public/ front-facing roles like a teacher is, yet they're expected to attend the office for 60% of their time, despite 99% the work being identical regardless of location (Teams meetings etc). Comparing FT employees, that's only one day more than a teacher they can WFH, despite the huge majority of their roles being conducive to almost complete remote working, and teacher jobs almost completely UNsuitable. And they get nothing like the paid holiday or inflation-busting pay rises that teachers are awarded.

Concentrate instead on cracking down on the disgusting behaviour teachers are expected to put up with, the lack of resource and assistance where needed, the frightening pressure caused by targets and Ofsted. Not by promising benefits that are in no way appropriate to the needs of the role and will just make staffing/resourcing issues even more impossible.

You can think all you like that teachers have it easy and count the cars in the car park til the cows come home, but the reality is we have massive shortages and young people are turned off it. So something has to be done if people want good teachers in front of their kids.

Late
Late
On a weekday morning

Pass the smelling salts quick.

If our terms and conditions are so good, please train and join us.

what am I reading?! 🙈

You will see me leaving school at 3.30pm. You won’t see me marking in the privacy of my home until late. I leave early to get ahead of traffic as my commute is long. I prefer my home to a classroom so I take my marking home. What difference does it make?

People in from before 7am, on call 24/7 as DSL, providing cover during PPA, on playground, lunch, break and after school duty, open evenings, open mornings, admissions meetings, dealing with the LA, the Virtual School, the DfE, ESFA, IT problems, setting up student accounts, maintaining staff accounts, governors' meetings, data drops, departmental meetings, safeguarding training, strategic planning, intervention classes, reports and assessments and marking, pastoral care, behaviour management - somebody might get ten minutes here and there if they lock themselves in a cupboard, but usually, there is always somebody, staff or student wanting a piece of them.

A realistic day is for a late start at 7.30am, then briefing, then playground, then register, then assembly, then lessons, then break, then lessons, then lunch, then lessons and perhaps a PPA where you have to break up a fight in the corridor, then register, then playground/bus duty, then meetings/trainings/twilight/detentions/calls home/meetings, out nice and early by 5.30pm because the site manager needs to lock up. Nice, easy ten hour day, maybe nine hours fifty if the locking oneself in the cupboard worked. Smidge under 49 hours. Add in Saturdays, holidays, trips and events and you're looking nearer 10h x 195 if not more, giving an hourly rate nearer the £20 an hour mark and significantly less for many.

And support staff get even less.