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).

Sorry op but this did make me laugh, no one loves us teachers. But, actually I agree with some of what you say (not the national apology bit...)

Even I am not sure I agree with the national apology part :). Although maybe if it came from the government.

Thing is, you cant generalise. There will be some who worked hard and some who didnt. The ones that didnt, well they (or their SLT) have been lazy and will have to live with the fact they let students down.

I agree completely.

The amount of teachers on MN who think teachers should NEVER be criticised for anything and are all saints who basically live for the good the young people of the UK is staggering

Show me a post where a teacher has said this?

Also - your derision for the idea that we work for the good of children and young people speaks volumes about you. Why do you think I do my job?

But @notevenat20 most of your posts, and not just on this thread are criticising schools/teachers. Not seen any positive ones

Dh is SLTworked one day a week and around an hour every day.

DS had teachers who supplied relevant work, were available by email and provided support. He also had teachers who provided nothing and weren't responding to emails or on teams. Since he's been back, those teachers are no longer in school. No idea why, could be end of contract but it's a huge coincidence.

SLT did sometimes get off lightly. Fewer classes so little teaching to do and none of the usual discipline issues and phone calls to field.

This is not representative of a classroom teacher.

Maybe he deserved it after years of overwork?

Well, we are being told we have to live with the fact that we let students down which kind of fits with the martyrs and saints narrative....

I'm support staff and worked my arse off from my sofa, and in school for key worker kids plus year groups that were allowed back in on a rota. My teaching colleagues worked their arses off and I don't envy our SLT who have worked extremely long days, straight through Easter, half term and summer to manage the staff, coordinate support for the kids and prepare for September return.

My role is term time only - my garden contractor started on the first day of the summer holidays and yeah, it looks the nuts now.

As pp say, teachers not setting work is almost entirely the fault/responsibility of the SLT and it is there you (and no doubt ofsted) should look to blame

Our state primary did nothing and the head was pleading keyworkers parents not to send their kids in (Max 2-3 a day).

Absolutely no support from school, no phone calls from teachers until parents started to mount pressure towards the end of lockdown.

I don’t blame the teachers at school, I blame the leadership. There was no direction from the head, no resources provided for teachers to continue working.

Unsurprisingly the head had not made a return for the September term and they are recruiting a new one.

This isn’t all schools, other schools in the area where fantastic! Especially in the less privileged areas of our city, many schools when above and beyond there duties imo

@SmileEachDay Why do you think I do my job?

Top pay, early finishes and long holidays innit

It is easy to jump on the op if you are a teacher who worked hard, because it feels offensive given that it has been a slog.
But even as a teacher I recognize that unfortunately she is right- there were some teachers who did the bare minimum or their SLT did not insist on a close to full workload. Their students were let down, because certainly after the initial few weeks of figuring it out, there are some schools and teachers that absolutely could have done better.

The whole profession is not accountable for those teachers, however, they do exist and its easy to see why some people feel frustrated by that. Redundancy is not appropriate because student numbers more or less remain the same, but it is okay to feel disgruntled if your child was one who missed out on half decent home learning compared to others you know of.

As pp say, teachers not setting work is almost entirely the fault/responsibility of the SLT and it is there you (and no doubt ofsted) should look to blame

Not Ofsted. As they pointed out, they can't inspect schools if there are no standards to inspect them against. That blame lies at the feet of the government, who were asked by Ofsted to provide standards but didn't.

schoolsweek.co.uk/criticism-of-home-learning-unhelpful-says-spielman/

"Ofsted’s chief inspector has said it is “profoundly disappointing” to see commentators trying to “polarise” the back-to-school debate by “portraying teachers in a negative light”.

Teachers’ safety concerns about returning to the classroom have prompted criticism from national newspaper columnists and some politicians.

Writing for Schools Week, Amanda Spielman said it was “very clear to me that teachers want to teach and the current situation is as professionally frustrating as it is personally concerning”.

She also said that criticism of the level of home learning provision was “unhelpful”.

Lord Adonis, a former Labour schools minister, recently called on Ofsted to name and shame schools not providing adequate online learning.

Spielman said: “Many schools have made a tremendous effort from a standing start, and they are doing what they can in the absence of clear guidelines.

“When calls have been made for Ofsted to inspect home learning, I have been very clear that there are no standards to judge against and little clarity over what schools are required to do in these extraordinary circumstances.”

She reiterated calls for the government to set “clear expectations” for schools and parents about what could be expected as “some children [will] need to be educated remotely for some time to come”."

Unsurprisingly the head had not made a return for the September term and they are recruiting a new one.

Good luck with that. There's a massive shortage of headteachers which I think will only get worse in the current circumstances.

The thing about Adonis is (due to his own business interests..) he totally conflated home learning and live teaching. A lot of the newspaper headlines about students not receiving learning were actually about students not receiving real time learning 5 + hours a day from their classroom teachers (as you say noble this is not consistent with Oak provision as a gold standard)

And, yet, now I see scholars concerned about over exposure to screen time. We really should not have gone for full on screen based live learning without considering the damage done by excessive screen use.

@PTW1234 that is not good. What did the school say when you asked them why they made these decisions?

In contrast in my school KW children attended full time from June 1st and we taught proper planned lessons to begin addressing gaps in learning. We could do this as it’s a large school so we had enough staff to teach these groups alongside the other year groups the government asked to return and we could accommodate children we were worried about from another year group in another bubble.

In other schools there might have been a high proportion of shielding staff (including staff in 3rd trimester of pregnancy.) This causes a staffing issue if you only have 10 teachers of which 2 are shielding and 2 are pregnant (all possible scenarios.)

Another issue was that in some schools there was a very high proportion of KW children so no places for non KW children. Best to ask the school why they made those decisions but also what they are going to do to provide an education for your child going forward in the event if quarantines and potential shut downs.

OP is it hard living such a bitter life?

I've worked both private and public. In each there's lazy workers and hard workers. Generally job security feels better in public, but all my private jobs had much better working conditions and pay/rewards.

Focus on your own job and if you dont like it get another one. Oh and if you ever fancy that easy job of teaching by the way, I hear there's plenty of vacancies

Do your workplace know about your luxurious lunches in the park whilst spying and your continual observation of 4 hour bike ridesOP?. Apparently if you don't work you get sacked.

Do your workplace know about your luxurious lunches in the park whilst spying and your continual observation of 4 hour bike ridesOP?. Apparently if you don't work you get sacked.

That's an odd post.

Two teachers at my DC's secondary lost their jobs over the summer.

One science teacher who spent enormous amounts of time golfing and providing private tutoring via an agency, leaving his own Y10 and 11 pupils to fend for themselves.

Plus a maths teacher who also worked for the same agency.

A group of parents followed the schools complaints procedure (reception, SLT, HT and then chair of governors). They had no response to their concerns until they contacted governors, who said that they would look into the concerns and presumably kicked off some kind of investigation.

I'm sure both teachers now realise he made the rookie mistake of offering private tutoring to pupils in their own school.

There are good and bad people in every profession.

Focus on your own job and if you dont like it get another one. Oh and if you ever fancy that easy job of teaching by the way, I hear there's plenty of vacancies

You can't really do that with your children's schooling. I guess I could try to swap them for private school kids?

How so? You seem to know the movements of your headteacher. It sounds like you weren't getting much work done.

Top pay, early finishes and long holidays innit wink

I meant apart from that, obviously 🙄

chaotic the agency shouldn't have employed them to work during school hours. It's illegal.

They must have been on short term contracts as no teacher can be sacked that quickly. Even if they commit safeguarding offences, they are suspended.

But notevenat20 most of your posts, and not just on this thread are criticising schools/teachers.

It is true that I don't post about the happy things in life much.

It is also true that the dismal support DC's school have given us over lockdown while I was trying to work combined with the astonishingly self righteous posts here from a minority of teachers have upset me. I just don't get why these teachers don't see that everyone in the country has been suffering. That millions of people have been trying to hold down a job while looking after children at home. That millions have lost their jobs or had their pay cut. That schools being shut damages women's lives potentially irreparably. I will stop there.