To wonder why teachers say they don’t have flexibility - isn’t this the solution?

[Greeao]

I could be being quite naive here but chatting away with friends this afternoon, two of whom
are teachers, they were saying they have no flexibility and ’literally can’t go to the doctor on a work day.’ This was in comparison to other jobs in the group which were office based.

Surely you can go to an appointment at 5pm or 6pm in some doctor surgeries? Then for dentist and non urgent care you’d go in the half terms or holidays?

Similarly I don’t understand the issue with schools plays etc, surely it’s feasible to go to some of these events as not all half terms and holidays are the same for all schools and not every event is in the day time. For instance at our local school play starts at 5pm.

It’s not a goady post, I was just reflecting on my drive home and perhaps I don’t get the industry?!

So you ring the doctors at 8am or fill in a triage form online - at 930 they ring you back. You can’t answer because you are in a lesson. You ring them back at lunchtime and either all the appointments are gone or there’s one left at 2pm ….. when you are teaching.

You hit half term and finally have the appointment - the doctors refers you to the hospital who send you a letter with an appointment during term time. You ring the doctors secretary who tells you that doctor only does fortnightly outpatients appointments on a Tuesday - the next one is when you are …. Yup you got it - teaching.

So you put the appointment off til Easter but 2 weeks before you get a letter cancelled because the doctor is on strike/isn’t available and they offer you another appointment …. You guessed it again - when you are teaching!

Yes schools have diff holidays sometimes but it’s more likely your child is in school in the same county as you and therefore has the same holidays - so not time off for you for Xmas plays and assemblies because you are teaching.

Parents evenings - sure you can get an appointment after 5. Also you (as a teacher) have to offer appointments after 5 despite that not being in your working hours.

For flexibility- teaching is AWFUL. Your friends are telling the truth

The meeting is an extra. So you'd normally be at work until 5 doing marking/prep/admin. Now you've got to stay ANOTHER 1.5-2 hours after that meeting finishing at 5 to get it all done. So meeting finishes at 5 but you're still there at 6:30. And you started at 7:30am.

how does your 'just ask for a 6pm appt' work for friends' weddings, kids getting sick and needing a day off or needing to be picked up early, picking a parcel up from a sorting office, being in to receive a parcel where the best estimate they can give you is between 8am-8pm, going to view a house, school sports DAY (clue is in the name, it doesn't take place in the evening), etc. etc...!

Depends on school if they will allow you to go during school time.

I have two children and I’m a teacher. Things I ca control I book for the holidays or out of working hours. There are things I can’t control such as:

• plays (none have been in the evening and I wouldn’t expect the teachers to offer this anyway)
• sports days - lower years in the morning and higher years in the afternoon so I would need to request a whole day off.

You get the idea. Luckily, my school is understanding and I haven’t actually had the sports day example come up yet as one is at pre-school. If you have bookable annual leave you can just book it. As we don’t have that we have to request leave of absence, with reasons, which may be granted with or without pay or denied. So, we are at the mercy of our SLT.

There is stigma attached to being a parent and a teacher. I’m part time and often get comments from martyr teachers.

The move to phone appointments actually makes this harder. I schedule dentists etc in half term etc and do hospital like any other work place by asking for time off. But I cannot wait by my phone for a 10am phone call which invariably comes at least half an hour later when I’m in front of y11.
teachers do get time off sick like anyone else and the vast majority can do doctors but we’re also often made (in many schools) guilty for taking the time and inflicting this somehow on our colleagues

But a meeting not finishing until 5pm/not being able to leave until 5pm is an everyday occurrence for most people. Your staying 'late' for this meeting, would be most people's leaving work early.

That is also true but those people won't also have stopped being paid at 3.45pm.

Having lots of holidays isn’t the same as flexibility though. It’s a plus, obviously it is, I was a teacher for 35 years and the holidays are definitely a perk (even when there’s work to do in them - it’s on your own schedule) but it’s not the same as flexibility. If you are ill on a random Tuesday 8n September, say, you can’t easily see a doc. If a holiday price shoots up on the first Saturday of school hols you can’t go the day before and reduce the cost.
But anyone who talks about a group of people ‘screaming’ - especially in a written format - is clearly biased against them.

Surely the flexibility of teaching is that you get 6 weeks off in the summer?

No, flexibility is being able to take time off when you need it.

Teachers are never going to admit they have flexibility, even when they do. Even when they have the same holidays as the kids - They'll scream they do not have holiday's. I'm not saying they don't have it hard, because they have a tough job to do...but they do have flexibility.

Tbf, I've never screamed anything at anyone.

For the umpteen millionth time...

I am paid for 195 days work across the academic year.

That pay includes the how ever many days of statutory holiday pay that everyone else also gets. But we don't have annual leave.

We are not paid for the school holidays.

Unlike other jobs, we are not strictly paid for the amount of days we have worked each month otherwise our October/November, December, February, March/April, May/June July and August pay would all be different making it impossible to budget easily.

If we were paid that way, September, January would be the only months we received a full months pay and in August we would be paid nothing at all.

To avoid that, our annual salary is divided into 12 months so we receive a lower monthly salary but it's equalised across the year.

Tbh, I find it concerning that so few people are able to understand that when it's explained to them.

So, they're not holidays, they are unpaid non working days. Unfortunately, a great many of them are still spent working.

I never understood this argument at all…
Teachers often argue on here that they’re only paid for the 195 days they’re teaching.
But someone earning the same 30k in nursing or office admin works many more days and longer hours over the year.
So saying “I’m only paid for 195 days” doesn’t really change the reality that the annual salary is the same despite significantly fewer working days…fact!

So what teachers want is…
195 days contact- working hours 9 to 3 on the button.
All of the holidays they already get.
Extra time off whenever they have a medical appointment, a child’s play, a wedding a christening etc.- paid.
And to be paid more for the holidays…because they’re not actually paid for the holidays.
anything else??

Our local orthodontist will only give after-school and holiday appointments to private (paying) patients. My DD is on the waiting list and I am dreading having to manage the appointments. I even considered if it was worth paying the £2000 private fees to avoid the hassle over taking time off....

Oh dear. None of that sounds like what the teachers on here have said at all.

No - what I want is:
-occasional ability to leave before 4/5 pm for an appointment or child’s event
-occasional opportunity to attend a family event on a weekday eg wedding or funeral. Unpaid is fine.

Nobody has said they want anything different at all. You have just been given an explanation of the situation as it is.
The salary being the same is irrelevant. Jobs have different salaries/hourly pay.

OP to answer your own question, why don’t you define to yourself what the word “flexible” means and then see if the teachers job role would fit into that definition. There are a lot of perks to a teaching job (such as the ability to make non-urgent appointments and check ups in the holiday and do life-admin then) but you would have to be insane to think flexibility was one of them.

Any job (teaching or otherwise) where one person is solely responsible for the continuous legal delivery of a service or product to the public within their contracted hours and the service cannot be paused or broken or reneged is not going to be a job role that is flexible.

If a teacher has a dental or medical emergency that they need to urgently see a doctor or dentist for that day but they are teaching 30 kids that day for the duration of the entire day, the only way they can make or attend an appointment is either the school paying money for another adult to deliver that service in the teachers absence or the teacher relying on the goodwill of another colleague (if even available) to deliver that service. That’s not the definition of flexibility.

Do you not think when making appointments teachers are not desperately trying to find the latest one (e.g. 5pm) so that they can attend once their contracted hours are over? Do you think that hasn’t occurred to them already?

An example of a flexible job would be having the freedom to leave an office at 2.30pm for two hours to attend a Doctor’s appointment and then make up the two hours lost on another day or in the evening. How on earth would a teacher do that with their job role?!

All your friends said was that their job wasn’t a job where flexibility was in high abundance which is factually correct. How can you not see that? The literal definition of job flexibility is being able to choose what hours you work your contracted hours within a day. Teachers by the literal nature of their job cannot do this.

No. Jeez, the comprehension is poor today!

We just don't want to be told we don't understand the terms and conditions of our own job.

Or to be constantly criticised and misunderstood by people who have no knowledge or understanding of it.

To be presumed stupid because we haven't come to the same 'obvious' conclusions as people who've never done it about how we can do it instead. Or to think we don't try/utilise obvious work arounds ourselves without the idiots of MN suggesting them to us first.

We know the terms and conditions, perks and limitations of our profession just like everyone else understands the same of their own. Unfortunately, some people very invested in arguing that we don't.

No. No teacher has said that. Only non teachers seem to sprout this bullshit. What I want is to actually be a parent to my child and not yours

And what I’m trying to say is…teachers don’t have it as bad as they keep saying they do! Lots of jobs have worse conditions, hours and pay…but nooo it’s ok ye keep moaning over there.

The one area where there is inflexibility and I find it hard is in having sick children
So if my children are ill we are fortunate in that you can get one day pay to look after them. After that it would be unpaid, and if nursery is £90 a day, that could be a mess very quickly. If I was in another industry, I might be able to take annual leave at short notice to cover a child's illness. With having two younger children, this is an area of stress for me and I wonder how others manage it

.

Not when staff are still in for exams prep, results, results analysis, counselling and supporting kids to help them find university and college places, setting up for the new year, etc, etc. So it's more that some school staff get 6 weeks off, but many might just about manage a fortnight in one block if they are lucky. Which is a bit shit when they've also been in for at least part of every half term, Christmas and Easter.

'in the staffroom'

Imagine !

I know we theoretically have one, as it's where the supply staff go at lunch, but I think I've been there about twice since September.