Coping with Teacher Training days

[bacon]

I'm new to education, DS1 in reception DS2 19 months old. But this is really going to get right up my nose. Teacher training days tagged onto half terms. 1st one Friday just before the weeks break.

How do mums cope? Ive got something planned - booked months and months ago and have to leave really early and now just checked diary and DS1 is home and I'm paying for DS2 to be in nursery!

Why cant they do these training days in the evenings or even Saturday morning like the rest of us? Why has education have to be so disrupted? Surely with the number of weeks off they get it wouldnt be too much to expect a few days to be put towards training?

Struth, we are self employed here, hubby never hardly gets time off, when we were farming we worked well unto the night, expected to get up at the crack of dawn, 7 days a week, working when completely exhausted and so hanging and no paid holidays!

So many families are struggling with childcare, trying to hold onto their jobs, and then this is slapped in our faces.

Surely this doesnt happen on the continent??

I suppose it depends on whether you think of school as education or child care.

Don't think it makes you a bad parent to say that INSET days are bloody inconvenient.

Of course it doesn't mean you think that school is for childcare but it's not unreasonable to be able to be a parent who works and training days make working very difficult.

Schools should make every effort to make training days as manageable as possible for working parents which means planning them well in advance and communicating to parents etc.

I don't see any reason why they shouldn't make some sort of holiday club provision either. IF schools had their training days on the same day this could be council run and that would also mean schools and teachers could work together and share costs of external speakers or actually plan and share resources. Shock.

I do find it bizarre that people get so uppity about the idea that schools should recognize that most parents work. Of course they should.

No need for 6 weeks holiday either. It does not benefit the children to have so long and there's lots of research to indicate this.

By the way I speak as a teacher and therefore obviously a working parent.

I don't think it id right to say that teaching has more cons than pros. Other than working hours - which are in some way negated by the holidays there are no cons to my job.

fivecandles schools do publicise their INSET days well in advance. The fact that the OP has missed this notification is not the school's fault.
Many schools do amalgamate for some INSET training also, that is not a "shock" idea, but that would not be appropriate for every scenario. Most days are needed for individual schools to address their own agendas and development plans, which will differ from the school up the road. Often, they are limited as to when external speakers and trainers are available.
How else should schools "make every effort to make training days as manageable as possible for working parents" (when the ways you mention are already covered by the vast majority of schools) when every parent's wishes are different. For every person who wants them tacked on to a holiday, there's another one who prefers them mid-term to spread out the load. Schools can't win. People will whinge and complain on here whatever.

We send out a full year calendar in the first week of term showing all Inset days and then a reminder the week before but parents still turn up to find school isn't on.

I had an Inset day yesterday [hangs head in shame] with a national speaker and 5 other schools and found it really useful (I've been working on some of the suggestions this morning ready for after half term - sad I know)

Teachers need the training days to make sure they are up to date with everything and to enable them tocarry on teching the childen to the best of thier ability, Inset days are just taken from the School holidays so if there wasn't inset days then there wouldbe 5 more days in the school holidays. All though it looks like teachers have short days and long holidays, I know for a fact they do a lot of school related work in thier own time. DD3's Teacher is actually marking assignments over half term< DD1 is a teacher and she is going in on Monday to teach revision lesons then has to spend a lot of the week marking and planning lessons, This is all in what should be her half term.
I alwys found that when my children were youngr I preferred to have an inset day tagged onto a holiday rather then just have it on some random day in the middle of a term.

'People will whinge and complain on here whatever.'

But it is a very reasonable complaint.

It is appalling that working parents (and most often working mothers) who are just trying to earn a living should get told off for daring to complain that INSET days actually make life really, really difficult for them.

And,no,not all all schools do try to make it as easy as possible. In fact, I don't know of any which offer childcare when they would offer before and after school clubs or holiday clubs.

I imagine that some of the people moaning on about parents 'whingeing' about INSET days are the very same people who moan that parents should get off benefits and get into jobs. Well what are they supposed to do with their kids on INSET days?? Sadly not everyone has a nanny.

And I am a teacher.

Childcare for INSET days that should say.

FWIW, I'm not necessarily saying that it's the fault of teachers or schools, but it's the lack of joined up thinking. Bizarre really when you consider most teachers are likely to be parents themselves. I've been put in the difficult position of having my own kids in the back of my classroom when their school has INSET but mine doesn't. That's very far from ideal.

I would object very, very strongly to mandatory training at a weekend. (Not least because all the teachers I know seem to have quite a lot of work already over the weekend.)

I have two primary-aged children. I like and respect their teachers enormously. Yes, Inset days can be a pita if they sneak up on you (ie you dozily don't remember that they're coming up, as has happened to me a few times ). But, er, I do also want their teachers trained and supported.

fivecandles have you stopped to consider for a minute who will staff "childcare" for INSET days? where will the childcare be housed?
who is going to pay for it?

"Our school announces inset days in the summer for the coming academic year- can't believe you didn't know about yours op."

Same here. All the inset days are set out on the holiday timetable that gets handed out. DD has next Monday off.

The ones that irritate me are the Friday and Monday around Feb half term. It is a miserable time of year to find things to do as most places of interest are closed at that time of year, and we can't afford to jet off to somewhere hot and exotic.

Dd1's school do not publicise them at all except to put them on the website. Two of the five have taken place in the middle of the week in the last half term. Utterly. utterlky random placement. Dd2's school have also had one day - yesterday - making a total of three extra days childcare that dh and I have had to sort out in ONE 1/2 term!
Dd1's school are very keen on training though - so much so that every other week they finish lessons at 2.30 instead of 3.30. The 18 sessions of this type are apparently essential THere was huge parental oppposition to this - it was ignored. Apparently an extra 18 hours away from the kids is far better for their education than teaching would be? This includes sixth form students.

Putting it on the website is publicising it.

And sixth formers - well, anyone of secondary age - surely don't need childcare!

I work in a school (not a teacher) but ours are often in work very early (even though they have little ones themselves), they take loads of marking home with them, see parents after school so often they don't go home till late...

My kids have training days too and they are different to my school as we are different councils, but I just get on with it!

YABVU.

And our inset days - for the school I work in and the schools my boys go to are also publicised at the beginning of the school year..

Motherinferior - sixth formers need contact time with their teachers. My 12 year old on the otherhand is maybe a mite young to be left 8-6 whilst we are at work?

'fivecandles have you stopped to consider for a minute who will staff "childcare" for INSET days? where will the childcare be housed?
who is going to pay for it?'

Er, yes, the same people who staff holiday clubs and before and after school care. Parents would pay for it as they do for these services.

Gor blimey, this is hardly rocket science!

'My kids have training days too and they are different to my school as we are different councils, but I just get on with it!'

Well what does 'get on with it' mean. Do you have someone to look after your children then?

Because not everybody does. In which case it's really quite hard to 'get on with it'.

Sorry, I don't think that putting the dates on a website is adequate publicity and even where the days are adequately publicised they are still incredibly inconvenient. Why is it not ok to acknowledge this?

But the people who staff after school clubs are probably not going to be available duruing the day on odd days here and there - at our after school club, most of the staff are college students who would be at college during the day.

fivecandles Sat 23-Oct-10 18:18:24

Er, yes, the same people who staff holiday clubs and before and after school care. We don't run holiday clubs or before and after school care

Gor blimey, this is hardly rocket science!

perhaps if you didn't jump to wrong assumptions

Well maybe your school should run holiday clubs and before and after school clubs too.

More rocket science!

Are working parents not allowed to send their kids to your school then mrz??

Or are these services supplied jointly by other schools in which case perhaps those employees would be glad of the extra work

Or even more revolutionary perhaps people could be employed specifically to staff these days!!

Don't really understand the resistance to making life easier for working parents TBH.

Presumably some of you ARE working parents or know people who are or intend to be or have been at some point.

Wondering how anything ever gets done when people want to just put ridiculous obstacles in the way of perfectly logical solutions.

Perhaps we should all just sit at home all day because doing anything else is just going to cause too much trouble

fivecandles Sat 23-Oct-10 18:31:35

Well maybe your school should run holiday clubs and before and after school clubs too.

Why?

Are working parents not allowed to send their kids to your school then mrz??

oh yes but they are clever enough to arrange their own childcare

Or are these services supplied jointly by other schools in which case perhaps those employees would be glad of the extra work

No other schools in the LA provide holiday clubs and before school breakfast clubs are run by staff who on INSET days are attending training with their colleagues but then none of our parents seem to have a problem with INSET days unless they happen to forget about it

And yes I am a working parent but managed to make arrangements for my own children's school INSETS thank you

fivecandles Sat 23-Oct-10 18:34:51

Wondering how anything ever gets done when people want to just put ridiculous obstacles in the way of perfectly logical solutions.

Your logic only seems to fit your narrow picture of schools and parents though fivecandles