to think that 'training' days should be abolished?

[Northernlurker]

Now I do not mean that teachers shouldn't get any further training - clearly they should - but I think these extra five days should stop being distinguished from the rest of the pupil holidays and shouldn't be the free for all they are at the moment.

If you have children at various schools they can all be at various dates - which is hard for anybody - sahp or wohp - to keep track of.

Some schools do things which are just plain weird - dd1 goes back to school after Easter for two days then has a training day then back to school for the rest of that week then the following week is at school for four days before having another training day - which by the way the school calendar records as being for A-level moderation. I presume that isn't the only thing going on then though.

In addition I know of another school where the head arranged for all staff to do some evening training sessions instead so that they had the days designated as training days on the school calendar as holiday instead. Now of course they had put the time in, no question of that (one of my friend's was a teacher there) but I think the majority of parents would have been pretty pissed off to know about it nonetheless - and I know that's not logical but I would have been the same. I think the Head thought that too actually as she told the staff to try and keep it quiet!

I would prefer not to know when my children's school were doing their training. I'd just like 5 extra days added to the holidays with no comments and no random days in the middle of terms. This should be standard across the LEA and thus make life easier for teachers, parents and particularly parents who are teachers!

AIBU?

Riven, that is what you get when you have schools controlled by managers. Load of old poo.

Does your DD go to a special school? If so, I would be expecting to see a lot of PMLD specific training, how to use sensory resources effectively, sensory stories, Intensive Interaction (that's amazing, by the way, the results are incredible,) behaviour management, Team Teach or similar, signalong/ Makaton, using the arts across the curriculum, etc etc. Not hiking and twigs. Team building can be done effectively through good, strong managment strucure and staff support. People who feel valued and are geuninely working as a team don't need hiking, twigs, paintball, blue sky thinking or any kind of managment twaddle.

Oops, I'm on a very high horse here. But it was one of my pet hates - because I was a senior teacher, I was also a "manager" and expected to be able to deal with flip charts and several different colours of markers. . I'm a Special Needs teacher, I like songs about monkeys and putting tapioca in welly boots and calling it art.

My Ds is at junior school at the moment.We have just had the holiday dates sent to us from the secondary school he will be going to in September and was pleased to see that 2 of the teacher training days are on Mondays unattached to school holidays, giving us 2 long weekends. This gives us the chance to go away somewhere out of season.

Riven LOL re the hiking and twigs. I hate that crap in my little corporate world (and actually refuse to attend those things now - they can't make me go outside in ugly boots) so I don't blame any teachers for complaining about that.

"[....] training is audited and reviewed to ensure it is relevant and applied to school life?'

Yes. I can and it is. "

Riven, training is audited and reviewed to ensure it is relevant and applied to school life- that doesn't mean it is always relevant and applied to school life, just that it is audited and reviewed with a view to ensuring that it is.

You should read some of the reviews