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

If you are walking past teachers houses - are these near the school? Could the teachers be walking to school as well?
One of the teachers at my DC primary goes in at 7 am (ironically, I sometimes see her walking past my house when I open my curtains, hope she is not judging me) and I quite often see her leaving after 4 pm. I know at least a couple of others cycle.
Can your DH see the school car park from his workplace, or has he left himself by 4 pm?

Op the shortage of teachers probably would mean a part time time table and your children having to learn at home in the future. Would you prefer that? The working at home is for PPA and can be done at home, perhaps the teacher lie in will mean the kids do pe then come back to their teacher being there after? I don't think they mean the kids being on their own while the teachers lazing in bed. I work in a school and I see the crap they put up with and it's mostly the parents! Anything to entice them is needed.

You say this like there is something questionable about not slogging through a rigidly set timetable in a fixed workplace. Like maybe they aren’t really working hard enough, eh? Teachers have been working in the evenings for a long, long time. It’s not part of the recent wfh explosion (not that I have an issue with that either) and I’m not sure what the problem is with someone finishing the portion of their work where they do need to be in a certain place at a certain time and having a bit of flex over where and how they complete the rest.

Almost like some people are disappointed that the work life balance isn’t as shit and constrictive as it possibly could be.

@Shinyandnew1 - i can’t imagine any tax payers are looking in other people’s windows in the morning to see what their curtains are doing. Except maybe you, OP.

Oh, I thought everyone was like me and kept a spreadsheet! You know, just in case ...

Working for their wage? Tell me you've never taught without telling me you've never taught.

Would you listen to yourself? What an attitude to have, and to not even be ashamed of it!

All that is being suggested is a form or flexitime/flexible working. Do you resent nurses having time off between their shifts too?

Jeez, I'm glad you're not my boss.

I bet plenty of those parents work part time, or work from home or don't have a paid job at all. A lot of teachers are ridiculously overworked and they're not exactly overpaid on the whole. They usually work in the evenings and at weekends and it's very difficult to take any time off in term time even if you're really ill.

OP, the tax-payer really need not worry about getting their money's worth out of the teaching profession. Seriously.

What is referred to in the article looks like creative PPA (the statutory entitlement all teachers have to a portion of time to plan, mark and prepare) arrangements to me. Full time teachers get approximately 2.5 hours per week (pro rata) out of class for this purpose. In recent years, many headteachers have allowed staff to work these non-contact hours off-site. Like many workers whose contracts permit wfh, teachers have reported greater productivity when spending their 2.5 PPA hours working off site; if you remain in school you are invariably called upon to administer first aid, take unexpected phone calls or roped in to supervise a wet playtime and before you know it, the small amount of time provided for PPA has evaporated.
The "9 day fortnight" is really an offer to chunk two weeks' PPA time into one day and offer teachers the opportunity to work this 2x2.5h from home. I think that's entirely reasonable.

For context, I am a teacher contracted to work 4 days per week. I refer to the fifth day (the day I'm not contracted to work) as my unpaid wfh day as I invariably spend it planning, prepping and marking. And that's in addition to the 2-3 hours I put in each evening.

Schools are trying to build small amount of flexibility into teaching and

All a charade, what teachers want is for systems to actually be fixed and to spend more time teaching.

IMO they need assistant/secretary type employees, 1 person per 2-3 teachers, to handle all the rest of the shit that's not teaching, or at least take some of the load off.

Doubt this will be a problem as many teachers work part time so I don’t think anyone gives a shit about closed curtains

Teachers do work for their wage and it's foolish to suggest otherwise. If teaching were so easy there wouldn't be any problem retaining staff. When an intake of Reception children has five or six who are still in nappies (no medical issue), and the older kids are happy to tell adults to 'f off, you fat cnt', it gets a bit tough.
There is some appalling parenting out there, along with some fantastic mums and dads. There are also some poor teachers, but the majority are hard-working, kind, professional people.
Try it.

I think if most offices offer some form of flexibility with condensed hours/wfh etc.. then these jobs will be much more desireable. I think that jobs that require onsite presence mainly will need additional perks to make them more attractive. The teachers at my local primary are amazing. I quite often see them going in at 730 when on my dog walk. The amount of stress they have to cope with is high (difficult parents, children with additional needs with no support). If there is any discussion on here about WFH then normally it is quite positive regarding improving quality of life etc..

It won't work in reality as most timetables, in secondary, just won't allow it. It's just another empty promise.

I think if I was a teacher the number one thing that would retain me is robust behaviour management. If that was in place, teachers could, y’know, teach.

Radical, eh?!

No wonder there is a shortage of teachers with attitudes like this! You don't own your child's teacher!

Our TAs all leave straight after the children (they are on very low wages and often have other jobs to go to).

Our teachers are expected to remain on site until 4pm. But often have meetings, training, comparison sessions with other schools in the trust. Next Tuesday our staff car park will fill up about 4:00 as we host teachers from other schools in the trust for training on something or other (I’m not involved but I know it’s on). One evening next term our carpark will be empty while another’s is full as they host.

I work part time but on my full days even I don’t leave until after 4:00 (often later when we have late collected children).

Yes, they get a lot of time during the “school holidays” but I can assure you they will spend some of those in school and remember they have to pay peak prices for EVERY holiday, they don’t have the flexibility that other adults with no or adult children get. They can’t go to their nieces wedding next week because it’s on a Friday. They would like to go to their elderly neighbours funeral but it’s on a Wednesday morning. They wanted to meet their husband after work for a drink but they’ve go to go home now because Billy threw up over their shoes.

It’s so easy being a teacher…… 🙄

What makes toy think you have a right to tell anyone to '"work for their wage" when many teachers work 60 plus hours a week, which I'm pretty sure is a lot more than your have ever done in your life by the sound of your entitled post.
Fine, I'll work my wage, no more marking or lesson planning, or patent evenings or updates, or answering emails, I'll just turn up for the day and go home and do fuck all for the rest of the time, I'd love to see if you'd like that.
Also why the bell would you be passing by anyone's home and peeking inside to see if they are sleeping, Jesus wept at the stupidity of the idea.

I totally agree that improving behaviour (especially post-covid) should be a priority.

Personally I’d look to improve the attitude the country and parents have towards education. I would also make it easier for schools to exclude DC where needed to prevent disruption to learning.

Teachers do work for their wage and it's foolish to suggest otherwise. If teaching were so easy there wouldn't be any problem retaining staff.

This!

There’s a massive recruitment problem. What would YOU do to sort it, if things like this will upset the taxpayer, @LaughingPig ?

NRTFT so don’t know if anyone has corrected your ‘schools closing for months during lockdowns’ statement. My school remained open for keyworker and vulnerable children during all lockdowns, and we went in on a rota. Whilst not in, we had to either pre-record lessons (to cover the days we were in) or live teach them via Google classroom or similar. We also had to do weekly pastoral phone calls to check in with our tutees. We also continued to mark work. We also had to make phone calls for those not doing the online learning, many of which led to parents abusing us verbally. Schools were not open in the usual way, but for many of us, our workload increased all while we got bashed in the media and by parents. Sure, don’t make the teaching profession any better, but don’t moan when your kid has no one to teach them because we’ve all got fed up and left the profession. If you want good teachers, you need to provide better working conditions.

Leaving aside that going home does not equal stopping work, I’d like to address your middle point. As a secondary English teacher I had around 160 pupils to teach. If I were to look at each book for 5 mins per week (and that’s not enough to mark them by any means: a KS3 extended writing task would take about 15 mins, GCSE 25 ish and A level can take much longer - and I’m quite a quick marker) that would be over 13 of those hours already. Then I have to plan what to teach in those 22.5 hours, produce teaching materials, photocopy any resources, attend departmental and pastoral meetings, record data from tasks I’ve marked, write reports (only once a year for each child, but even so that’s hours and hours of work), liaise with the ALN department about pupils with additional needs, do playground duty, write up incident reports for behaviour issues and fit in infrequent but vital tasks like reporting any safeguarding issues. I think you can see the remaining 3 and a bit of those 17.5 hours isn’t really going to be enough…

This.

I have no issue with any of the perks listed - if it works, go for it.

Private businesses seem to be offering a lot more perks these days so schools need to compete with this to retain staff.

It feels like it's just kicking the can down the road though. The education system is messed up.

When people do these sorts of threads to get a 'feel' for which way the wind is blowing why do they go so hard on the devil needs an advocate bit? The OP could have garnered these views without doing all the 'should teachers even be allowed a coffee break' charade because people will still give their reasoned and genuine views without 'debating' whether teachers should actually be visiting each child's home before school in the morning to get them ready and take them to school. The shark didn't jump, it catapulted.

Several teachers at my DDs school are part time, I find the part time ones less stressed and far more easy going than the full time ones. All are women who I’m guessing managed to negotiate part time when returning to work after maternity. I also know a male teacher (one of the school dads) who took paternity leave for both children so his wife could return to work and then took a more flexible teaching role, he’s far happier than he was.

If organised and managed well I think it could work, it certainly wouldn’t bother me having a teacher who is happier with their employment contract and not taking their bad moods out on the kids in their classes.