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

My DH and I were teachers and bloody good ones - in maths and physics where you can’t get a teacher now for love nor money. Before DC we both worked 60 hour weeks. It was relentless.

i then had 10 miscarriages - one after another. Probably caused by stress. When I finally had a pregnancy go beyond 5 months I needed extra scans. Every time I went the school moaned about it - after everything I had been through. One day I waked out of the door for a scan and never went back. My DH left at the end of the next term. We wanted to work to live and see our much longed for family grow up.

Now we both work in industry - wfh and on better pay. I also teach online to Asian children who have parents who really appreciate me.

My DD is a straight A student and wanted to be a maths/physics teacher all her life. We’ve finally put her off and she will now also go into industry.

3 good teachers from one family lost because of attitudes like yours. Good luck to children trying to get a decent teacher for A level maths and physics these days!

I'm a teacher, a parent ( daughter attends the school I work at) and pay tax. I'm going to have to have a word with myself to check l am giving myself value for money 🙄I teach the girl who lives opposite me. I'm 100% certain her parents couldn't care less about the time I pull my curtains back. They probably also don't notice all the evenings and Sunday afternoons I'm working upstairs in my study. Your points are ridiculous.

We need teachers.
We need good teachers.
Our children need good teachers and if this attracts them then it's worth it.
Either that or, you know, pay them properl...hahahaha yeah, like that'll happen

This.

Teahcers are hard working people.
This thread alone showed that most people dont relaly care if teachers sleep an extra hour a day- who are those 'hard working' people you think will lose respect for teaching, since it's clearly neithet you nor your husband, since he is not at work at 4pm and has time to scrutinise car parks in the local area.
Which admin tasks can be done AI, oh expert? Meeting parents? Replying to emails inclusing sensitie information? Attending parent evenings?

I had no idea people went round checking people's blinds and curtains and judging them by it! Seriously? Does anyone apart from OP actually even notice? I quite often leave mine closed by accident if I've got dressed and out of my bedroom while it's still dark and then gone out,which when I was a teacher I usually did in winter! Or I do it deliberately now if it's a hot day to keep the room cooler! I didn't know the neighbours were using them to record a timesheet for me.

Seriously though, noone needs to worry about the tax payers getting their money out of teachers. Every teacher I know does way more hours than they are contracted to do in marking, planning, extra curriculars etc. some of them also end up spending their own money on stuff for work a lot. I myself left teaching after 2 years because it was utterly relentless. I went initially to an admin job which was 9-5 with I think about 21 days holiday a year and I used to laugh so much when people asked if I missed the long holidays and early finishes. I had so much more free time if you added it up. I barely knew what to do with evenings and weekends!

I'm not sure exactly how this new idea works, but I'd imagine they are talking about timetabling 'frees' ie marking and planning time in a way that allows for later starts and flexibility, and letting people do the marking and planning from home not insisting on staying in school for those times, rather than any less work. Any lie in would be made up for by work on the evening I'm sure! It make sense as lots of jobs are offering more flexibility since covid ( including public sector in many cases - are the curtains of all civil service and council workers being watched, or just teachers, because lots of them have had all sorts of flexible working arrangements for ages).

I was coming to say this! It's been mentioned so many times!
How do the neighbours know the blinds are closed due to a lie in? Perhaps they forgot to open them?
What if they start late but don't lie in?

YABVU to think that is what is actually being offered.

You must be absolutely mad if you think teaching offers greater flexibility than most jobs. There is quite literally ZERO flexibility which is why it is so unattractive to a lot of people

I'm pretty sure the OP is just goady about schools - on another thread they had a bee in their bonnet about how all the best schools had super strict school uniform and how all hell would break loose if kids could choose when to take their own jumper off! 🙄

Who opened the door and let the “13 weeks paid holiday” fuckwits in?
IT IS NOT PAID!
I just get my salary spread across the year.
so do the TAs. They don’t get 13 weeks paid holiday either.

Also, given the actual hours teachers are contracted to do, if us taxpayers want more value for our money we should probably start by paying teachers for more hours - surely none of us expect them to work for free?

So how would you make teaching more attractive? Education is a very skilled profession, Good, committed and capable teachers are valuable and they deserve to be paid accordingly.

I am the chair of governors at my child's school, and technology is used widely in order to reduce admin, and yes, it has reduced working hours but let's not pretend teachers are working 8.30 - 3.30. They are at DD's school by 7.30, and rarely leave until 4.30. This is a lovely school, fantastic and happy staff, OFSTED rated good, and it has been incredibly hard work to get the school to where it is now.

These hard working people you speak of include teachers, you are being very narrow minded and if we can enable flexibility in their working life then we should.

FWIW I work for the local authority in a senior position, my bedroom curtains are always shut...

"Work their wage" wow! Maybe you and others that think like this should be thanking the teachers that use that wage to buy equipment etc for the classrooms because the budget doesn't cover it! The burn out rate of teachers who work well beyond their working hours is phenomenal. And no I'm not a teacher but I do know many

You have used the wrong numbers for your calculation. Teachers are contracted 1265 hours in every school year. In reality we work significantly more than that. If you look at the hours required to ‘meet the demands of the role’ pay is nowhere near what you suggest. Even if it were £34 that you be just over £1 per child per hour.

Our school seems really flexible - eg teachers have had days off for sporting activities they are part of and if it makes the teacher more likely to stay, no problem.

On the face of it a late start obviously sounds terrible and like it wouldn’t work with the job … but … thinking about it, I don’t see why it wouldn’t work. Plenty of days my (primary) age children have PE or French or similar as their first lesson, or perhaps it’s assembly day. On those days k really don’t see what they would be missing for someone else to do the register and for the actual form teacher to turn up after the assembly or PE lesson.

Oh do please stop. It's embarrassing to portray yourself as being quite this stupid. Perhaps you could engage in some hard work of your own and try to formulate an argument without quite so many holes in it.

(Not hopeful)

Quite

I think we need to do all we can to recruit and retain teachers. I wouldn't begrudge them perks, they work extremely hard, more so than a lot of folk who are on much bigger salaries.

Too right.

Parents are at the root of most of the issues teachers face (I'm not a teacher).

In many respects I have no issue with these offerings, and teacher's at DCs school already get wellbeing days. I do struggle, though, with the acceptance that staff need wellbeing days while children are expected to be in school even when quite poorly or as a post yesterday suggested, when a family funeral happens.

Do you assume that everyone with their curtains closed is a shirker? What about those who work shifts and sleep all day? What about anyone with any job who is unwell that day and needs to sleep it off?

Whilst some teachers may have a well deserved lie in, I imagine the majority would not. If I had a morning off, I'd use it to take my children to school, to attend celebration assemblies, to read with my kids on a Friday morning for 5 minutes - to be a present parent and do all the things that I cannot normally do, as I am bound to school hours with no time off for work. Yes, we get the holidays but it doesn't make up for what we miss of our own children during term time.

Yep, I'm not a teacher but work in education. Some teachers in our trust easily do 1,400 hours. We've got 2 HoD's that work 4 days a week but work their entire part time day for admin purposes just to have the weekends with their young children. Don't get me wrong, as with any job there are some that do the bare minimum but as ever it's the complete incorrect portrayal of "finish at 3 and get 13 weeks holiday" that gets peoples backs up and eyes rolling on threads like this.

SCHOOLS WEREN'T CLOSED DURING LOCKDOWN FFS

Lol as if! Teachers are so micro managed, barely get time to eat and pee during the day, in early, home late then more work to do. No way can I see this happening and logistically impossible, can you imagine a class of 32 teenagers doing their work from a computer led lesson without support in the classroom?

Also please realise that most teachers have their own kids to get to school, breakfast club at 7.30 am so won't be asleep with the curtains closed!