To think job-sharing for teachers of kids 8 and under is selfish?

[blowingBubblesinABreeze]

My kid is in Year 2. There are 30 kids in her class. She has teachers who job-share (monday-wed morning, Wednesday afternoon to Friday).
We had a parents meeting and it was very clear to me that the teacher barely knew my child, and was just making up things to say. Other parents said the same.

Do I blame her? Yes and no. No because it is impossible to know 30 kids in a class if you are spending half the time with the kids in the class that a normal teacher does. A full-time teacher with 30 kids in the class already struggles to know all the kids in her class well. (understandably).

Yes because she has chosen to do the job share. (In the case of the teachers in my class, I know that they are both well-off). I know that this is not the case for most teachers. But again I would argue that many teachers that would choose to job share are not on the bread-line.

A teacher should know the kids in their class. That is part of their job. The kids are LITTLE, LITTLE people. They are in school for most of their waking hours. Alot of them really struggle to go into school at a young age. So to be left in the hands of a person who barely knows them is simply not fair on them.

We are prioritising the desires of teachers over the NEEDS of children. Which is where society seems to be headed as a whole. The desires of adults is our focus, neglecting the basic needs of our little people.

You realise we only get paid for the days we teach when part time? I am doing less hours but for less pay. I dont think I'm special, but I will only work part time at the moment. If my school does not want to or can not facilitate that I would leave.
However to say we think we are special because we want to do less is ridiculous. You could say that about any person who works part time, are they all selfish and just wanting to do less?

I agree with this. My kids loved having two teachers, they did different things with them and it defined the week. If one is weaker then lucky they don’t them full time!

I remember one where one of the teachers was very strict but the year before she had been full time so my yr 3 child said how lucky they were!

It’a very normal for children to not bond with one particularly teacher and then it’s a very long year.

Never occurred to me that the teachers were selfish. They aren’t volunteering.

Again you probably have two weak teachers who also aren’t good at job sharing.

Of course YABU! They do a job that suits them and their children and family!

This has very little/nothing to do with the job share.

Last year my child had job share teachers (3 and 2 days) and they were amazing - I can't say I really learnt the difference between the two teachers, but they were both very engaged and brilliant. Both attended each parents evening and were very much a team. I was concerned at the start as I wouldn't sure how my child would adapt. This was year 3 (so 7 turning 8)

Can't say I feel the same about this year's teacher. Not engaged and doesnt seem to know who half the kids are, or anything about them. She's there all 5 days.

DS2 had job sharing teachers throughout primary school and it was never an issue.

It sounds like this particular teacher is a bit of a dud.

She is with the children at least 15 hours a week, of course she should know them. Yes 30 is a lot, but so what?

Knowing who they are isn't difficult if you are meeting them half of the working week.

I don’t think not knowing the kids is a job share issue specifically. My DS Yr 1 teacher had no idea who he was! And she was full time. But it’s because she wasn’t very good. The difference when he got the year 2 teacher was astounding - you just felt the woman’s grip even as a parent!

Some job shares work and some don’t. DS had it in year 3 and it was fine - at the state level they had wildly different responses to behaviour but the parents raised that and the teachers sorted that out between them to have a consistent response.

I disagree. My 2 daughters have mostly had 2 teachers at school each year. It’s never been an issue at all. The teachers both cover parents night and talk about your child and progress, behaviour, social skills, achievements etc. Wasn’t any different to when they’ve had one teacher. The teachers at your kids school are clearly not doing a very good job and that’s the real issue.

Your experience sounds bad but mine has been positive.

My dd2 had a job share when she was in Y1 and it worked very well. The teachers had quite different styles and they communicated well, worked together, and seemed to know my dd very well at parents' evening. Of course that's only anecdotal and my dd was an easy child, as opposed to my ASD dd1 who needed more attention and skilled handling.

There are always several job shares at the school and it seems to work well. If they don't, it's down to the individual teachers not managing it well, and maybe they would be just as bad as a sole teacger. So many of the teachers are 20s and 30s and have their own children. Who can blame them for wanting to spend time with their own kids as well as keeping their career going? I think they would struggle to recruit teachers if they weren't flexible with this. After all, they can't offer much flexibility in terms of working hours, holidays or wfh. I suspect the heads would much prefer only full time teachers, but they know they would struggle with retention if they insisted.

So what do you suggest ? Don’t allow any teachers to work part time? That’s fine , but you do know there aren’t enough teachers as it is so if you say no to the ones that would work part time your child will have a supply teacher who doesn’t know your child at all.

It makes no difference wether the teacher is well off or not - the job is horrendous so many part time is all she can face. Or she has chosen to priorities her and her families needs rather than thinking about parents with no clue about the job .

It might not be the job share. My child has job-share teachers this year, and it's the same for us as in previous years, which is that no one notices her.

She is quiet, well-behaved child who hates to call attention to herself.

Teachers never know her. We've had job share years, full time teacher years and it doesn't matter. Teachers are pressed these days, they have to teach 30+kids, most of whom demand a lot of attention, many with additional needs and it's easy to breeze past the quietly average ones.

Wait until they get to secondary school. They have loads of teachers.

A lot not alot. It’s two words.

I have about 60 pupils who I see once a week for half an hour in a group, for only 29 weeks of the year and I know who they all are. Why can this teacher not get to grips with the 30 pupils she spends multiple whole school days with?

I really hope this is a joke, Mumsnet always makes me think the worst.

The job share isn’t the issue here. In some primary/ prep schools (and certainly when you’re kids move up to senior school) children have different teachers for different lessons. Dozens if not hundreds of different children a week. Yet most teachers will know each child.

If I read correctly, your child’s teachers each spend half a week teaching. They should and hopefully do know them. Either there’s something wrong with what they are doing or, and this might be likely if this is early days of school, you’re expecting something unrealistic from a parent teacher meeting/ the teacher experiences your child in a different setting and so acting differently than what you know. (The often given example being ‘why are they saying my child is naughty/ bad at a certain subject? They’re a perfect angel at home’)

Sounds like she still spends more time with your kids than you do, so by that logic you should homeschool them.

Secondary schools spend only 1 or 2 hours with a class of 30 - teens need just as much attention as little ones do.

What are you planning to do about it?
Move schools?
Home school?

wait until they are in secondary school in exam years and you have two teachers teaching one subject but decide they will each teach different modules at the same time. nightmare, even the teachers themselves moaned about it and said it wasn’t working but there was no other way to do it. Ds choose different subjects for advanced higher than expected as he didn’t feel prepared enough for it after a year of substandard, education and the extra pressure it caused. His favourite subject became his most hated subject

Job share teachers are not ideal by any means, but teachers are also humans too.

I am a job share and I know my children inside out.

You’re judging the entire concept of a job-share setup based on one person.

It can be a huge benefit too - teaching is an exhausting job and I definitely have more time and energy for my little people when I’m in class, because I am not in there full time!

There must be a huge excess of teachers I don’t know about if we’re going to start threads demanding that the ones we do have stop selfishly choosing their hours / sharing of classes.

Welcome to the English education system.

It is Unmanageable if you also have a young family, so job shares are almost the standard now. No time to get to know the kids because of ridiculous pressures.

That being said, I think if she really didn't have anything at all to say then she is also unfortunately a bit crap.

I personally go to my job for entirely selfless, altruistic reasons

When teachers are leaving the profession in droves I would just be thankful that you have two fully qualified people teaching the class full time.
Many of my friends are support staff in schools and due to budget constraints etc more and more of them are having to teach/cover lessons.

nonsense.

we had a job share for reception. both teachers knew all the kids and the kids loved both teachers albeit for different reasons. it worked so well because they brought different things to the class.
I don't want a resentful teacher / burnt out teacher because they're not allowed to be part time!

Had two job share experiences with my dc - one was ok, one was fine to good. Smaller classes than 30 though in both cases to be fair.

Depends on the quality of the teacher, I would just say she sounds like a crap teacher.

It’s the quality of your teachers, not the job share. We had two teachers in a job share last year for DC2’s class. They were absolutely brilliant. They are individually excellent teachers but the transition and handover was seamless. Mrs B usually knew exactly what had happened on Mrs A’s days, and clearly knew DC2 very well despite only taking the class for 1.5-2 days per week.

With other teachers, I could see it not working so well, and if you think there’s a handover issue, you’d be justified in raising that with school.