I am not sure I agree that Teachers have absolutely exhausting jobs - much more so than most jobs - as said by man on r4 this morning

[RevolutionHere]

i am not sure what my dh, former welder would make of this statement

this is an argument regarding long summer holidays,

I think I didn't realise how different jobs were when young. I should have but didn't.

I did waitressing, my brothers did potato picking for weeks in the summer holidays. I worked on a machine putting in youghurt pots to be printed.

Recently one company paid a consultant to swan in do a piece of work and swan off with £125k!

some jobs are physically hard. Some jobs are stressful. Some jobs are just full on, whereas other jobs I've had top directors swan about from meeting to meeting, not under stress, whereas some directors of other firms are under constant pressure.

it's very different.

Reminds self to talk to ds's again about job choices, quality of life.

It really hasn’t in any way I can fathom.

I’m suggesting having all the time the kids are off in week long blocks vs some of it as random days would be a massive help for parents.

Teachers are responding saying inset weeks take place in the holidays. A random Thursday in May or Friday in November that my kids school take off isn’t even adjacent to a school holiday let alone in it.

I genuinely have zero understanding of how someone can say I’m wrong and those days are in the school holidays and also seem upset at the idea of having 14 weeks of holidays in blocks and taking the inset days within them vs 13 weeks of holidays in blocks and then 4 random days somewhere else. Why would it make any significant difference to you as a teacher how those days get structured?

@FrippEnosyou clearly have no idea what a gp does lol

Most schools them onto holidays for ease.

But if you're paying for some consultant to come in, they may only be available on a random Tuesday in March.

They come out of the holiday because they're part of the 195 days on which teachers can be directed. Students are only required to do 190 - so INSET doesn't come out of term time allocation. It's PART OF the holiday, although maybe not IN it in your school.

5 days in one go would be be really impractical for schools for lots of reasons. We use different INSETS for different things.

The INSET days need to be at the right point in a term - so, for example, there might be one focused on moderating mock exam marking - perhaps with some input from the exam boards or with teachers who mark for exam boards sharing expertise. This day needs to happen either just before or just after mocks in order to be useful.

Days focused on safeguarding training or routines need to happen at the start of the year.

A focus on exam analysis need to happen after mocks.

If there’s a new strategy for behaviour/attendance/whatever it needs to be planned in before that thing is launched to be useful.

They have to happen at the point in the year when they’ll be useful, otherwise they’re a waste of time.

INSET days are used for things like training. While some things can be done inhouse , using a power point , or national college course or whatever some things can’t. Diabetes training, first aid , SEND training delivered by a consultant etc, they all have to be paid for, and booked and they depend on the availability of the people running the training AND making sure you can “target” as many staff as possible for efficiency purposes. It’s also good to have refreshers throughout the years. People forget things, or they were off for some reason, or they recently joined and missed x,y,z and it’s not good practice to wait another 6 /10 months before they get that training.

Or they’re used for prep like report writing, SEND progress meetings , handovers, moving classrooms, changes in the curriculum/running of the school /policies. It’s a bit pointless to give a day for report writing , in the summer holidays.

It’s about the needs of the school and the children, rather than teachers going “oof I’d really love a random Wednesday off in November!” and the school makes it happen.

INSET days came in years ago and there was outrage at the time. They were called baker days. Teachers lost five days of their holiday. They were then slotted in at various points in the year. So they are classed as coming out of holidays since no pupil had their number of education days changed because of them. That is what is meant by INSET being taken from holidays. Totally impractical to have them all in one go at the end or start of term for reasons previously explained.

Fair enough. I guess all I’m saying is 4 days spread totally at random over the year and on different days per school is really impractical for parents and children. It’s a bit of a conflict and it would be great if there were a way to address it that worked for everyone (do training as a regular evening slot and everyone has 14 weeks holiday vs 13 maybe?)

That's your school choosing a stupid pattern!

Ours are all adjoined to holidays - and actually we disaggregated 2 for next year which will be run as twilight sessions.

Surely the six week holidays is one of the very few perks of teaching. Why is this even up for debate. Become a teacher if you want 6 week holidays

I do understand that.

But what people need to remember though is that teaching is a profession just like any other and training etc has to be based around the business need and availability of trainers. Eg we have annual or as it arises training for different medical needs. But we have to have that training when the nurses whose job it is to go into schools and train staff are available.

Plus, no other business, organisation or workplace is expected to base their training around childcare considerations for parents.

If your business requires you to travel, arranging childcare is your responsibility. Your employer doesn't do it for you. Organisations don't give a second thought to childcare considerations when arranging extended away days or overnight trips. My previous employers befote teaching certainly didn't. You're just expected to attend as required and directed.

Equally, my employer isn't required to consider parents' work commitments when arranging training.

We always have two training days after the summer holidays for all the statutory stuff, curriculum changes and pedagogical changes. But the rest are spread out because feedback from our parents is that they generally find it easier to cover random days than more days at the end of a holiday.

But childcare would need to be found whenever they happened because they are taken from teachers holidays not children's school days. If INSET days stopped being a thing, parents would still have to find childcare for those days

Gosh, you're being very annoying and slightly bullying.

OP explained why she doesn't want to answer. Also, I believe the original post was just a quote from the radio, not necessarily the OP's opinion.

They are taken from the holiday entitlement of teachers. It's not practicable to have them all in a block of a week. Training needs differ throughout the year and the dates are published in advance. Do you do all your work CPD at once?

Don’t forget though that teachers don’t actually choose when INSET days are , and a lot of them are also parents , which means they get fucked just as much as you by other school’s INSET days. Particularly random ones. We moan just as much about them sometimes.

No, the “eegyt” (as OP so nicely put it) said, absolutely exhausting job, much more so than most jobs. OP vehemently disagrees because… welding.

But what about what is best for the teachers? The professionals who need to be able to benefit from the training. Where do their professional needs fit i
here?
It seems like we want teachers to be highly trained to deal with a whole range of issues but also want to restrict access to training.

Well in fairness, like you just said before, it may have to be that way to manage getting the people they need for training. I can see that might happen.
So do your school more or less do what I was saying would be helpful and tag the days the school is closer to students onto the end of a break and you do the training in the evenings? Or do you end up teaching for extra days than is standard? I’m genuinely not trying to get at you (or at teachers at all) but I just wish there were ways to balance stuff that made life feel slightly less like jenga right before the tower collapses.
The inset days are on my mind as the one right after the summer break is proving to be a huge pain for us this year. I have a project cutover that falls that week and I have to be in the office, OH has just had his firm acquired and the new management revoked the holiday he had planned for end of summer including those days (shitty but sadly legal and while he is job hunting unlikely to be resolved in 6 weeks), grandparents are away with my brothers kids and get back mid afternoon that day. There are no clubs, I’ve had numerous nos from childminders and I’m now debating if our 15 year old neighbour would be a viable option 🤦🏼‍♀️.

None of this of course is the schools fault and there are lots of policies that I’d like to see changed to help make things less challenging for families. It has just always seemed to me that the structure of single days off spread through the year and differing by school is always going to be a bit of an additional challenge. Anyway thank you for giving us lots of information about why as it’s genuinely interesting and I can see there maybe isn’t any simple way to resolve that.

Oh god. I can only imagine that’s a total nightmare for you given how inflexible it generally is to ever be off outside the holidays.

What about another parent at school and you “owe” them one?

I am also giving that a try but unfortunately our go to people for swaps are both arriving back from their holidays that week. We are close to Scotland and there were some good deals flying from there on the Sunday/ Monday of the bank holiday weekend so it’s a super popular time to be away. Thanks so much for the thought though :)

The one right after the summer will be the stuff we are required by law to do - it simply cannot be anywhere else.

Ours will include all the medical training which will cover the new students - again, it has to be then.

We teach 190 days and are directed 195 days - next year, there will be 190 days for the kids as there always are, plus two INSET days in September, one in January and two disaggregated as twilight.

The jealousy around teaching is due to the holidays. But ask yourself this- if the holidays are such an amazing ‘pull’ for teachers, why on earth are so many leaving the profession and sacrificing that 13 weeks holiday a year?
Why are so many choosing to go back to a job where they get 4/5 weeks off a year?

Honestly, I wish I had professionals in my family who knew teachers or even teachers who could have advised me about the life I’d have and the lack of work-life balance. I’d have never taught if I could predict the future.

As much as the kids are mostly great in school and there’s job satisfaction and every day is different, I will be a bit gutted if any of my kids want to become a teacher. It’s caused me a huge amount of stress over the years. But I have chosen to work in tough schools. I know some schools are much less challenging in terms of behaviour and expectations of getting grades which seem impossible.

Frederica4

My son is 26. He really wanted to go into teaching. And he'd have been good at it too. I talked him out of it and he now works in a completely different sector (but one where he still uses his drive to help people).

He has manageable stress levels, flexibility, respect in the workplace, wfh and out earns me 🤷🏻‍♀️