Schools Reopening?

[Liveforever86]

When do you honestly think it will happen? And when do you want it to happen?!

If you put a lot into it I bet it’s easier to teach in the classroom.

Not a teacher but can see from friends teaching atm.

Plus happy with effort from schools.

Why would anyone think it will bebefore september ?

Isn’t this ‘teachers aren’t paid for the holidays’ stuff really just different ways of looking at the same thing?

The number of hours worked and the annual salary are what they are, very transparently (for teaching as for other professional jobs). You can calibrate one against the other by scaling 13 weeks holiday to the more usual 5 and seeing that teachers’ salaries would be increased/non teachers salaries would decrease. How it is formally treated by payroll surely makes no difference to the reality.

Anyone on either side of the fence who thinks the other side has it easier surely has the option to retrain and do the ‘easier’ job...

Working significantly over your contracted hours is a reality for teachers and non teachers alike. Lots of parts of the public sector are being expected to be flexible in challenging ways at the minute (I work in central government), the judgment on that is really tricky because this is such an unprecedented situation. The flipside is we largely have security of employment and pay, which is no small thing. I don’t know. It’s all hard.

Why would anyone think it will bebefore september ?

Well nobody really knows do they? I think it’ll be before then for a few reasons. Partly looking at other countries, partly based on assuming the government will be trying very hard to minimise the money they’re spending on wages, also it would seem like September would be a bad time to end up starting another spike in cases as opposed to the summer.

I can live with September personally as my DH is a SAHP but I feel very much for households where two people are trying to work from home.

I'm in the ME. We are highly unlikely to be back in the classroom before September.

I would far rather be back sooner. Distance teaching is hard & I know from zooming with my students each day, that they are pretty miserable, cooped up at home & missing their friends. So are my own dc.

If we get the go ahead to return to the school premises earlier than September, which is looking vanishingly unlikely, I would be delighted.

I am also looking forward to my summer break, as are my dc. We will all have been doing distance learning/teaching for 4 months by then & will be knackered.

Not being an indentured servant, I will not be working then. I've got a contract that states my working (& paid) weeks very clearly, & I work in an industry that already struggles to recruit & retain good staff.

I think it's an excellent idea for someone to be providing childcare on school premises in July & August, but it won't be me. Not my role.

In Denmark radio 4 was reporting they are planning a staggered opening in mid April after a month of shutdown with pupils attending part time and those going back to work on reduced hours at different times of the day to avoid the rushhour.

If the plan is to keep the econony ticking along and reduce the load on the nhs it sounds like a better plan than a full reopening in september followed by another big peak of cases in the winter.

We’re not all in this together at all - are we...

Once the peak eases estimated to be early to mid April, we will see the plateau, and by May we will be easing restrictions slowly. There will be no reason to keep schools closed for another four and months plus after that.

*Cornish
*
It's a 7 week term after the May bank holiday . Not sure why you are dramatising.

Also the 1265 is directed time. There is no planning, marking time. It's just time we have to be in school. No teacher could do the job in these hours. Unless you didn't mark or plan, write reports etc

Also TAs can work 37.5 hours my husband does and he gets 25k similar than an NQT it can't go higher than that though.

March 2021.

@DBML

Could you provide a link to the Minister for Education for Wales’s statement?

Because I’m looking here: gov.wales/topic/35/latest and the only thing that says when schools will reopen that I could find is here: gov.wales/how-schools-will-work-during-coronavirus-pandemic where it says no-one knows when schools will reopen.

I also had a look at various Welsh news websites and couldn’t find anything about it either. I, surprised it’s not headline news, at least for Wales.

Tulips I watched it last night. It was a she answer she said the 6 weeks will not be changed.

www.itv.com/news/wales/2020-04-01/education-minister-says-some-schools-in-wales-will-stay-open-during-easter-break/

This is interesting-a transcript of Jenny Harries, the deputy CMO, talking last week. I don’t think schools will reopening for some time.

What about working parents who are expected back in the office asap? I'm currently working from home and juggling childcare but if I have to go back before schools re-open, what happens then? We have wrap around care 5 days a week but can't stretch to full time care for 5 days, even if we could find it!

Crispy what did you do before they were school age? If it does come to that people will seek out childcare again.

Marsha - he went to a nursery full time costing around £900 a month. However, our circumstances and finances have changed since then and there's no way we could afford that now.

marsha I have spoken to my colleagues today we are indeed planning to open in June all being well! I am not sure how many times I need to say it! Perhaps you would like me to deliver the same message in a different language.

I can't speak for other schools or different areas of the UK. DD has just picked up emails from her teachers confirming exams will be taking place for her, not GCSES or A levels, and she must revise.

I know you find it extraordinary that not all schools want to remain firmly closed for the for the foreseeable future, but I think you will find once the peak has passed there will be a great deal of pressure to open, and way before the June date I have been told! :)

I didn’t know you worked there Cornish. Do you need the government to let you open or can you make your own decision?

When the government announced all schools closing did you have to do the same or could you have remained open?

DD has just picked up emails from her teachers confirming exams will be taking place for her

Which exams are these?

No teacher is going to be forced to work for no pay.

Well this school admin has been told she will be working on Good Friday - no extra pay..... there will be teachers and TAs in as well.

@NeilWilsonsWhiteHair

Yes absolute but then teachers can’t equally claim on the many threads that they do ‘we are so poorly paid’, we only get paid £30k and a train driver gets paid £Xk, they are not comparing like for like. We work such many hours etc. There contracts state that that are also expected to do lesson prep and marking etc, in addition to the 1265 hours but then teachers moan that they have to do this on top of their teaching hours as if this is unpaid too, out of their free time. They want it every which way.

@refraction your DH May be one of the few TA’s to be contracted to work 37.5 hours per week but they cannot do this in the holidays when the schools are closed. Accordingly, they are not really being paid £25k. If you google a take home pay salary calculator and put in £25k, their take home pay will be less as they have a deduction made for all the school holidays taken in excess of 5 weeks (8 weeks unpaid). An NQT however, on £25k, will get paid a true £25k as no deduction for unpaid holidays.

I learnt this to my cost when I took a job advertised at a school as £27k, to find that my actual take home pay equated to a job earning £20k and I had already taken a large pay cut so that I could have the school holidays to look after my children.

@Pomegranatepompom it does always seem that teachers are quite rigid and not prepared to go the extra mile. Look what nhs workers are doing at the moment, working extra shifts, covering for colleagues on sick, working longer shifts as are many industries. There needs to be a real culture shift.

I learnt this to my cost when I took a job advertised at a school as £27k, to find that my actual take home pay equated to a job earning £20k

You took a job where you were responsible for the pay of school staff, yet you didn’t understand what pro rata was? Goodness. Were you a bursar?!

@cornishdreams1

I don’t know how you came to the conclusion that most teachers hate their jobs.

Plenty of times on this thread teachers have said how they’d much rather just be back at work.

It’s very manipulative to suggest that only people who would be willing to work for two months of the year for free care (6 weeks summer; 2 weeks Easter and a week at half-term).

It’s attitudes like yours that make other teachers feel that they have to ignore their work-life balance and their own families in favour of the school and other people’s children.

I’ve been teaching for a long time and my first 10 years of teaching were a blur of constantly going over and above for school. Working long hours; trying to be there for every child. I barely saw my own as he’d be near enough tucked up in bed every day before I got home.

These days I’m older and wiser and realise that no matter how hard I work, it’ll never be enough. I was given a TLR and progression, only to have it stripped away when the school ‘restructured’, but I’m still doing the same job. I was simply a cost cutting exercise.

I’ve never once been allowed to go and see my child’s Christmas plays or sports days, despite all of the extra hours I gave up for school. It was always too inconvenient and would have cost cover.

So, now, I see my work as just a job. It keep me sane. I like my job. I enjoy teaching the children. I will always do my best during my contracted hours, but at the end of the day it’s just a job and my family come first.

As the NHS is currently battling like God knows what; I am happy to care for their children so they can work and save our lives.

If we are getting back to normal at summer time, then no I’m not willing to work for free. As I said, if schools and businesses are back up and running by then, I would expect my vacation to be too.

I think "going the extra mile" is pretty much business as usual for most teachers. That makes it harder to stretch this "extra" even further.