Teacher lunch hour!

[everychildmatters]

First off, I am glad I left primary teaching last year after 20 years in; things are only getting worse. I feel for the colleagues I left behind.
It is now becoming a common expectation that, for many different reasons, teachers are now being expected to supervise children over the lunch hour.
I used to avoid this by taking the time to which I was entitled but in order to do this I had to physically leave the building - go for a walk etc. In reality of course this was only for about half an hour or so as I wanted to be back in time to prepare my afternoon lessons.
AIBU to think teachers should be entitled to a lunch break?!!

@Cucy what would have happened if the teachers refused to do lunch duties?
We had a HT who tried to do this. The staff refused. She couldn't force them to do it.
Same with lunchtime clubs

No-one is saying it's worse for or specific to teachers.

This is a thread about teachers' T&C so your comparisons are beside the point.

When i was a primary school teacher my school had it's faults but lunchtime for teachers was protected time. None of us used to take the full hour, by the time you'd got yourself sorted for the afternoon lessons we had about 15 to 20 mins if that. We didn't have to supervise the kids as they were with the lunchtime supervisors. EYFS was a bit different it was a shorter lunch of 45 minutes but then they'd have some carpet teaching time so the TA would help set up anything needed for the rest of the afternoon.

Teachers need the full hour to eat something, go the loo and set up for the afternoon in their lunchbreak. Even then it can be a push.

Now I work in an office, I can go to the toilet whenever I like! If I choose to work through my 30 min lunchbreak I can, and leave work 30 minutes earlier. Absolute novelty after leaving teaching. Wouldn't go back to that thankless shitshow for all the money in the world.

Schools have to balance their budgets and maximise the amount spent on teaching and learning. It’s much more efficient to use a resource already in the building to supervise lunches than paying expensive outside staff.

Tbh I think teachers could be doing much more ancillary work to free up resources. DH is a headteacher and teachers at his school do a lot of admin, cleaning, maintenance and catering tasks.

That means he has more resources to spend on DC.

@BeachLife2 So you expect teachers to do unpaid admin, cleaning, maintenance and catering tasks as well as teach?!! You must be pulling my leg.

Lolz nice one 😂

The post I was answering to clearly says that the issue is specific/worse for teachers. Or maybe I misunderstood - apologies if that’s the case.

Your complaint is with your employer, not with us or the parents.

But yeah, some will sympathise on here and others less so - the second group probably also in a job with poor management and/or demanding clients and/or unrealistic workload, who also regularly work through their breaks (my own manager makes a point of scheduling meetings strategically over the 2 hours in which we are allowed to take our break, so we either get nothing or cannot take the full break. Yes, she is a nasty bit of work and it is burning me out, but predominantly because this is just the tip of the iceberg).

I guess it is just another reason as to why teachers are leaving in droves.
The "good" news is you no longer need any formal qualifications to become a teacher (back in my day it was a minimum of a 2:1 degree to be accepted onto teacher training) so guessing that may help with recruitment?

No, they are completing UNPAID supervision of children for 30 minutes and then taking the remaining 30 minutes unpaid for lunch/ marking/ preparing afternoon lessons/ dealing with parent messages/ dealing with pastoral issues/ managing children that the MDAs can’t manage. Apart from any time actually eating, this is all unpaid work.

Yes, all teachers do. Because our number one priority is keeping children safe. If a child is hurt then obviously that is awful in itself, but it also costs schools/ LAs huge sums of compensation is applicable.

Teachers are only paid for the statutory amount of holiday - the rest of the time is unpaid.

Of my 28 days of summer holiday, 7 of them were spent working 10 hours per day in school setting up a new classroom and other resource provision. That’s 70 hours of my unpaid holiday. It doesn’t account for time spent working at home during the holidays on lesson planning/SEND documentation/ data analysis.

I’m on this thread as it’s my unpaid day off. I’ve worked 5 hours so far today, having completed 4 days in work 8-6.30, and still have about 2 hours worth to complete. Children may go home at 3.30 but that’s not the end of the day. We have meetings, parent meetings, after school clubs before we even start on our own work.

Whether teachers are paid for holidays isn’t really relevant as they get an annual salary, which is paid throughout the year.

Not in secondaries in Scotland. Would be SLT

Legally in the UK you cannot work more than 6 hours without having a 20 minute break.

In some areas there are paid lunchtime supervisors.

PTCs also get lumbered with it have the privilege. When I was still working, our heidie also put a note in the bulletin asking classroom teachers to volunteer. Ha.

When I was a PTC, I recall being paired with a Depute who would conveniently find something that he had to be doing - like checking the stairwells - while I was breaking up a fight. Halcyon days.

Dinner ladies?

Not voluntarily. They are pressured into it.

There is no way on earth teachers get that.

The best way for things to improve is for all teachers to work to their contract. Everyone needs to get on board with this instead of saying ‘but it would affect the pupils’ and ‘but then the poor headteacher’ or whatever else.

If EVERYONE only worked the hours they were supposed to and only did the duties they were supposed to then you’d quickly find that something would be done.

HOWEVER - very few jobs would give a lunch hour. 30 mins definitely so I think it would be reasonable for the head to change contracts to this.

Lunchtime Assistants

The primary I worked in had enough lunchtime assistants

If teachers wanted to work in their classrooms it was up to them but they never supervised children over lunch

The expectations are always there although officially optional.
I have just had a very frank discussion with my headteacher about this notion of 'for the children '.
We are expected to teach all week, go on an exhausting residential where we are woken throughout the night every night, and then teach all week again. No break!
Residential used to be hardly any sleep the first night and then not too bad after that. With the range of needs that we now have in mainstream, we have children who simply don't sleep, need continuous supervision etc.
The expectations of what a teacher is willing to do FOR FREE are just too much.
In response to the earlier post about primary having lunchtime supervision. Sadly they supervise the majority whilst the teachers are expected to be on call for any issues: there are always issues!

Do you live in Japan?