Have state school teachers faced redundancy for not working during lockdown?

[notevenat20]

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I think those of us who work in the private sector understand we are going to have to work during periods of self isolation whilst juggling family. It was the same during lockdown. We want to keep our jobs so we will have to provide the service.

This got me wondering, is this a pressure state school teachers feel too?

Certainly at DC’s school no educational provision was given for almost all of lockdown (there were 6 key worker children in the school, out of 420).

Piggy - not only my view it is the view of my children.

The school don't use microphones so it I often hard to hear what is being conveyed.

I agree Overtherainbow those posters do come across as a bit know-it-all

Know it all?

I definitely don’t know it all. Pretty sure noble doesn’t either.

I do know more about teaching than someone who has never taught. I know more about my school’s context than someone who doesn’t work there.

But know it all? No.

I’m heartily sick of people on here telling me “teachers” are X/Y/Z. That they should have done A/BC. I’m tired of explaining what I did at my school, only for people to tell me (having never taught) why that is wrong.

And most of all, I’m sick of hearing how much everyone suddenly cares about the inconsistency and underfunding in the state education system. That has been there all along. BoJo and his cronies could not give a single fuck about state education. They’ve systematic stripped out the support children could access for SEND and SENH, ripped away funding for projects that helped community poverty and have made the curriculum linear and elitist so that it directly discriminated against disadvantaged children.

So to hear - from people who frankly don’t know about education beyond their own experience- how I should have been live teaching or it’s not true that families don’t have WiFi is just....a lot.

Noble and smile out of interest what school do you teach at ? Is it secondary and state?

My comment was to the OP zora.

The problem is a lot of posters have voted for a low tax party. State school funding is absolutely shit and schools rely upon the PTA for funding and for teachers to provide materials as well in school cases.

Secondary/state/English teacher zora.

Why?

What a pointless thread... this has repeatedly been discussed on countless threads.

There will always be people in any industry or vocation who try to get away with doing very little. So many stories of 'my neighbour is a teacher and I saw them sitting in the garden in the middle of the day AND I saw them going out for bike rides'. I was working whilst looking after a 1 year old throughout lockdown (teachers, like everyone else, had to look after their own children and homeschool them too) so I would have to catch up on most of my work after 7pm. Neighbours probably saw me going out on walks in the middle of the day but they will have had no idea how much I was doing. How could anyone. My head of department was pretty much working 12 hour days.

We got very little in return from the kids, despite our best efforts. So I find it mind boggling listening to all these parents complaining. The majority of our parents didn't even make their kids do any of the work we spent hours preparing each week. We had to practically beg them to do anything. We also had a huge number of kids lie and tell their parents they had been sent nothing. Not always the kids you would expect either- good ones did this too, prompted by their friends. They deleted emails, deleted google classroom invites so parents were none the wiser. I wonder if any of those parents are on this thread now complaining that the school 'didn't send them anything'.

Staff at my school also had to deliver food parcels to almost 50% of our pupils families which took a significant amount of logistical planning and time out of each week.

I don't even know why I'm writing this. I've been going into work for the last 3 weeks with none of the PPE or safety afforded to ALL other professions. I've had to comfort colleagues in tears, terrified they're going to bring this home to their vulnerable family members. We are working harder than ever as we are moving from room to room and have had to significantly adapt our long term planning and lesson plans. We have had to deal with the emotional fallout of lockdown with kids who have suffered from a lack of any rules, routine or consistency for the last 6 months- to say the least. I teach 300 students a week. I'm exhausted. Then I come on to read this.

Smile I did say you are a bit Know it all?

But anyhow It seems you have just proved my point making sure you tell us that you

"do know more about teaching than someone who has never taught. I know more about my school’s context than someone who doesn’t work there. " .. and on and on.

You may well know more but that doesn't mean that my children's lack of provision and the poor provision and leadership approach don't count.

If you care about education start voting for a party who haven't been stripping it's funding for the last 10 years.

My neighbours are our friends, we were not spying on them. They told us they gave up and were not working?

There was no repercussions they are now working.

Zora

If it makes you happy then yes, I proved your point.

You, however, totally missed the point of my post.

I am cynical I am afraid about those paid for videos you talk about zora. Those are moonlighting teachers making a quick buck so they can set up business and get out of the classroom, thereby depriving schools of more classroom teachers and more talent.

I am glad your DCs enjoyed it truly. The older children get the more specialised knowledge of precise curricula is a necessity.

Why did they give up?

piggy no I don't think so as they taught during the day in the country they were in. And actually it was a friend who is a talented mathematician at a top Uni who put us on to them. But I digress.

I don't feel there is much constructive conversation or positive exchange.

I have said enough.

Good night.

Solidarity, @Mogtheforgetfulmum these are tough times for teachers.

Look after yourself and avoid the obviously shitty threads.

These threads turn nasty because a few posters refuse to accept that some schools/teachers made little effort and trot out unhelpful we’re not childcare/parents can’t be bothered comments.
Some schools were brilliant, some not, I don’t know why there is a need to defend the ones who were poor. That’s what gets people backs up.
On the nhs threads, when people are critical, there’s normally someone apologising if care wasn’t correct and offering to help, rather than aiming to belittle or deny.

It was acknowledged, pomegranate but it doesn’t make a difference because some people are just goady fuckers looking to wind up teachers.

They deleted emails, deleted google classroom invites so parents were none the wiser. I wonder if any of those parents are on this thread now complaining that the school 'didn't send them anything'.

Call me naive but this hadn't occurred to me. We use Doddle and if you set work as classwork rather than homework (which we did for core work in lockdown) parents don't see it, only pupils. The fire reminder went to pupils' emails; the second to parents which occasionally elicited a response. I wonder if there was an element of claiming they didn't have any work and parents not checking? It would explain at least some of the secondary teacher bashing ok Mumsnet.

@Zoras I really hope you'll be freeing up a space in state education to home ed your child with all these fabulous US resources. I'm sure schools would love to replace teachers at four quid an hour, but they might find that behaviour management and assessment is something of an issue. Good luck with preparing you DCs for GCSE.

I remember I did moan on a thread as my DC attended a handful of days in lockdown under KW provision but weren’t encouraged to complete home learning. I remember a teacher was sympathetic- understood how my DC were disadvantaged by this. It really helped rather than have someone deny it was poor.

Pom

Is that why they turn nasty? I think the inconsistency of provision has been repeatedly acknowledged.

How are we supposed to “help” with the lockdown situation that the OP has started this thread to rehash?

Could have even been me, pomegranate

But this isn’t one of those threads is it? And we’re not in lockdown and people aren’t asking for help are they?

I wonder if there was an element of claiming they didn't have any work and parents not checking?

There absolutely was! I spoke to a number of parents (eventually - our protocols didn’t allow us to contact parents at first) whose children had insisted I wasn’t setting work! As Mog said, it wasn’t necessarily the obvious ones. One very good boy was being set so much (inappropriate) work by his father that he couldn’t face doing any more for me.

I take your point re this thread.

Honestly I do understand a bit, there are 2 posters consistently on nhs threads ranting. I swear one is a Tory plant.

What do you think teachers were doing in KW provision? At my school in the end we came up with timetables sessions because it was so difficult to get KW and vulnerable children to do the work they'd been set. They had every opportunity. Without wishing to stereotype, vulnerable children from the least stable backgrounds often present with very challenging behaviour too, so managing the situation was very tricky.

My children watched films and did colouring.