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

Great another teaching bashing thread. They may leave work at 3pm but they often go home and then WFH to do lesson planning, marking, following up safeguarding referrals, calling back parents who wanted to speak to them about concerns. They work far more hours than people realise and often pay for resources for their class out of their own pocket because funding for items such as paper and gluesticks leaves little to go round.
I would be delighted to see a teacher having a lie in once in a while rather than my DD'S class not have a teacher anymore as they've walked out after a nervous breakdown mid term- this happened last year to us and it's a great school.

As for your earlier point of lock down closures... the teachers hardly enforced that did they?!

I think any employer should offer flexibility in whatever form works for them and the employee and teachers shouldn't be an exception to this.

If they aren't in active teaching time or meetings then surely to fuck there's no reason they need to physically be there?!

Are you for real? As a public sector worker and tax payer, it’s no one’s business what hours I work, as long as I fulfil my contractual obligations

well students won’t be sitting around waiting for them so I don’t see the issue. If we need out of the box ideas to retain teachers then why not?

You have no idea.
My son is a teacher. It's a job that requires a fixed amount of front of class time but vastly more outside of that.
He's in every day at 8.
Has a lunch break once a week as the other lunchtimes he does revision / STEP/ Maths club. He does three after school classes a week so his actual in school time is 8 to 5 most days with no lunch break. "Free" periods are often spent in front of a class with no teacher.
There are parent's evenings for every year group every term which run until 8/9pm.
Also 4 open evenings this term for prospective Y7s and Y12s. They also run to 9pm.
Add to that working every evening and Saturdays. He also works most at least half of the holidays.
When you want to look round a new school who do you see?
On parents evenings how many teachers do you speak to?
When your child stays behind for booster classes or goes in at Easter for GCSE revision who do you think teaches them?
Who goes in on exam results day?
Who takes them on school trips?

I mean the amount of uninfirmed people on this post.
Those teachers at my school leave the car park by 4 because they go home to do more work.I see@LaughingPig s husband is spying the car parks in nearby schools but probably does not clock in those teachers work evenings and weekends. If you think op teaching is so flexible please join our ranks, I don't think you'd last long.

Oh and @ATenShun and the OPs DH may want to consider that I know a couple of schools where staff have to be off site by 4.30 as the caretaker is only paid til 5.

Do private schools struggle to recruit and maintain teachers? If not why not? I don't think it's purely a question of pay

Traditionally, no. But, over the past 2-3 years, yes. Our retention is starting to struggle badly because:

• we could get a job in a state school for more money and fewer onsite hours (our teaching hours are 8 - 5 plus duties plus one late evening a week (7pm or 10pm depending on whether you do boarding) and Saturday mornings.
• we aren't in the TPS any more.
• there is no end to the extra demands that are made on our evenings and weekends. That used to be fine because we were paid as much or more than our state colleagues, had longer holidays and smaller classes so it was a much easier job. But we're now at the point where I think I'm 11% lower than I would be a state school (5% rise then a 6% rise, I think, not sure - we didn't get either) and the hoop jumping we used to be free from is approaching state school levels (not as bad yet) so people start jumping ship.

As a teacher, I think the idea just scratches the surface. I think teachers should only work about 80% of the school timetable and the rest of the time should be given for planning and marking. This would mean that hopefully they could have evenings free like most other people, not catching up because they have been in lessons all day or called in to cover.

And that teachers go home and spend hours marking, but @ATenShun probably thinks the marking happens magically on its own.
Not to mention out of 50 hours of contact time over 2 weeks, I have 10 hours 'free', and many other stuff like extra meetings at lunch, after school (once a week every week for extra 90 minutes and logner on parent evenings that go on until 8 PM).. What a life, huh?

Well, if it's in the Guardian.........🙄

OP what publication do you work for?

You seem to have an issue with closed curtains?

Maybe this is something you need to address.

I think some ‘taxpayers’ would like a live feed into each teachers’ classroom, focused on their desk so they could see that they were sitting at it and working after the school day ends.

Perhaps they would like to share their laptop screen as well, to make sure anything on the laptop was purely work-related?

Of course yabu. In many other jobs, people can work from home etc etc. if it works to retain teachers, then so be it!

It’s not really a great look for hardworking parents to see class teachers heading off home during the school day or walking past a teacher’s home to see the bedroom curtains closed on a weekday morning.

It always massively irritated me to see all the people who could work flexibly pick up their own children at the end of the school day. People who work from home with their curtains closed are massively taking the piss, too - how very dare they.

So you know what I did? I left teaching and joined them. If that option had been open to me, I'd have stayed, but now they've got one more role to not be able to recruit into.

Without paying more to teachers, what suggestions do you have? Because this attitude is massively failing our children.

Where do you get 17.5 hours from hours?
I have4 free hours a week (5 lessons a day, so less than one free a day, I have at least 1 full day with no breaks each week), (luncthimes I dont count as they are unpaid). I calculated my salary per hour based on what I work, I got UNDER minimum wage per hour counting all the extra time. If you are ignorant of realities of teachers life, dont be a Trump spreading fake news.

For a standard start to teaching (8.45) I used to arrive in school for 7.45

My DH starts classes at 9.15 and usually arrives on site at 7.45. You need this time to set up ready for classes.

Today he got away early. It was 4.30 pm. He will, after dinner, head upstairs to his study where he will be working until about 9 as he does every day. He sees 160+ students twice each a week.

He also teaches evening classes one night a week (his subject is offered to the local community). On those days he is out of the house from 7 am until 9.30 pm

But yes teachers are lazy and 'hard working parents' need to see that their tax is being well spent.

Teachers do ‘work for their wage’ - they do extra hours marking, lesson planning, school meetings, prepping classroom for next term etc. I really don’t think you need to worry about tax payers not getting their moneys worth. As for walking past a teachers house and seeing their curtains closed - really?? I sincerely hope most parents don’t know where the teachers live for a start!! Also I expect many won’t be having a ‘lie in’ , they will probably be giving their own children some quality time or prepping for lessons that they’d have otherwise be doing at silly o clock the night before

If what we are talking about is giving teachers a bit of flexibility that many other professions offer that help make the job more attractive/ prevents teacher burn out - I’m all for it.

Daily Mail probably.

The biggest barrier to teacher recruitment and retention, in my opinion, is absolutely everyone and his dog thinking they understand what the job entails. Until we have policy headed up and implemented by teachers who actually get what's going on, the current situation will remain unchanged.

Ad for hard working patents being passed off their child's teachers curtains are closed padt 10am, get a fucking grip, love.

Weird stalking like behaviour to be keeping an eye on the curtains of a teacher's bedroom.