INSET DAYS...

[poppiesinaline]

please tell me why they can't be held during school holidays?

I mean... teachers get enough time off after all...

I don't mind too much.... its quite nice having one off without the other... but for those parents that work, it must be a PITA.

I had this discussion with a friend of mine who is a teacher and she was at my suggestion that she should have to 'go to work for a day or two' during one of her many weeks off.

Discuss...

Not heard of that one, we are supposesd to be getting in house trainers so will be easier than atm , jsut takes a while to get staff on the courses then trained.

I don't know if it differs in Scotland but for my dd's primary school this school year 2006-2007 the inservice days are as follows,

August 14th 2006, day before the school starts back for new school year.

November 16th + 17th, Thursday Friday, making it a long weekend for the children.

Tuesday February 20th, the school had the previous Friday off, the 16th, and Monday the 19th off so made it into a long weekend half term. In Scotland this is the only half term we get we don't get a week like you do in England. The teachers only had to go in on the Tuesday as that was the inservice day, the others were holiday.

And lastly in May the children and teachers are off on May the 7th for the May day holiday and then the Tuesday 8th of May is an inservice day for the teachers, kids go back on the Wednesday.

I don't see a problem with these dates, they are generally attached to half term holidays or the end of the summer holidays. Also on my local council website I can check the suggested dates for the next school year so that gives a rough idea of what to expect.

A friend of mine left our workplace to be a teacher. I enviously said to her how lucky she would be getting all the holidays off and she told me that she wouldn't really get Easter as there are courses to go on then and also in the October holidays there are more courses to do to keep up to date with qualifications, so in reality she said she only really got the summer holidays as the rest of the holidays she'd be working/training.

Your friend was exaggerating abit there, linnet

To be fair to teachers and local govt, it amazes me how many parents don't check the holiday dates in advance.

E.g. Derbyshire moves to a six-term year for 2007-8. The result of this and Easter falling so early is that this term next year, children will have a February holiday, return to school for a couple of weeks, have a long weekend (Good Friday plus Easter Monday, Tuesday highly reocmmended as INSET) then go back to school for a couple of weeks before having a two week spring break holiday.

I am amazed how many parents I have spoken to who don't know this!

My/DD's school is having a long half term holiday in October. We will finish on the Wednesday and be off for 1.5 weeks. The holiday dates were issued last July and sent home with the children. I haven't spoken to a single parent to whom this wasn't news when I mentioned it. Clearly they are not all holiday-date obsessed like I am and working out how to get cheap deals!!!

Anyway, AFAICS, that gives people plenty of notice to arrange childcare, doesn't it?

I love it when dd comes home with the newsletter giving us all the dates for the coming terms, I go straight to the calendar and write them all on and then put them in my diary as well.

I guess I'm holiday-date obsessed as well SueW

How do the English school holidays differ from Scotland?

My dd gets 2 weeks at Easter where I am it's the first two weeks of April, 6 weeks in the summer end of June to middle of August, 2 weeks in October again the first 2 weeks, and 2 weeks at Christmas, plus the long weekends in February and November.

How do the English holidays compare if you get a week long half term in February? Being nosey now.

Usual English hols:

1 week in October
2 weeks at Christmas
1 week in February
2 weeks at Easter, usually a week either side of the Easter weekend
1 week at end of May (Whit week)
6 weeks in the summer, usually late July (around 20th) to early September

There are some variations e.g. Leics has a similar summer break to Scotland for some reason!

PS Hols are marked in my diary as soon as dates are released too!

England (3 term) is 1 week in Oct, 2 at Xmas, 1 in Feb , 2 for Easter, 1 Whit and 6in the summer (used to be 6+6/7 weeks last year was 5 +6 , this is where the INSETs are coming from)

Does 6 term mean 2 weeks in OCt but less in the summer?
I liked that idea Autumn term is always so long.

Same as SueW says in private schools except more likely to be 3 weks at Christmas and Easter and nearly 10 last summer. One of our children's schools also had a 2 week half term in October.

We too have to write them all down early, fix childcare etc.

English, MB, and at 6th form college so all my classes are exam classes and all my classes are coursework classes. As well as A Level we do GCSE resits in 1 year so that's 4 pieces of assesssed coursework essays (+ 2-3 drafts for each) and 3 speaking and listening assessments (+ extra so they can select) + endless mock exams to get done between Sept and May. I know other subjects have it bad in other ways (DP is officially a PE teacher so little marking but lots of fixtures and I wouldn't swap) but homework for English is almost always an essay and since there are no right answers it's never a question of tick, tick, tick. Even the standardising materials we get sent from the board take hours to do.

Oh god, English! The worst subject to teach with regard to marking. My best mate is an english teacher and I wouldn't swap for all the tea in China.

I teach in an 11-18 comp, but half of my timetable is sixthform. At the moment because of dh's illness (and the stress I'm under if I'm honest) I'm on a 50% time table, and only teach my sixth form.

We run a one draft rule on C/W. I have quite a few to mark tonight

I was once interviewed at a college where they farmed out marking for other people to do like ironing. Don't know how this worked and actually although I hate it I see how marking is unfortunately very necessary but oh the idea seems so lovely...

Of all of my teacher friends and family the thing we most dislike about the job is marking.

I love planing lessons and I adore the actual teaching. I also like the 'in lesson' assessments. But the marking? pants!

If I won the lottery I would still work, but pay someone to do my marking for me!

Yes, I can relate to that. How are things with you and dh atm MB if you don't mind me asking? Is your school being understanding? TBH I always feel like I'm just treading water teaching and being a mum and am very aware that if one little thing went wrong in either area I'd go under.

He is feeling much better....symptoms under control and tumors shrunk some by treatmnet. The outcome will be the same, but slower now, thank goodness

School are being very supportive, Initially they just gave me indefinite compassionate leave. I chose to go bak to teaching half my timetable, and it made sense for me to teach the sixth formers....easier to get cover for the lower school stuff IYSWIM.

I normally only do an 80% timetable. I couldn't cope with fulltime, with the kids being younger, and no family near and dh being in the RAF. 80% i can enjoy teaching

Good, about the school being understanding I mean. When I find or create 'We Mark 4 U Ltd' I'll let you know.

LOL, set that up and the teacher of the UK will beat a path to your door!

blackandwhitecat marking is very similar in RE although I love marking which is fortunate. Like MB also love lesson planning, the only part of my job I don't like is tahteternal guilt feeling as I can never relax in the evening I always feel like I should be doing something for work. As an NQT I was told it would pass, that was about 7 years ago.

I teach part time for the same reason MB, two days last year and three this year. Am usually on top of evrything, used to hate that out of control feeling as the to do lists got longer.

We have tried marking codes at our school, so a letter standing for a comment which the kids look up using their own key. But our kids hated it.

Just came across this in my Teachit.co.uk newsletter 'Teachers and lecturers still do more unpaid hours than people in any other occupation, a TUC survey has found. Although the average working week has dropped by nearly two hours since 2001, teachers still work an average of eleven hours and six minutes more than they're paid for each week. On an average teaching salary, these extra hours would be worth £9,500 per year. If all the unpaid hours worked by teachers were lumped together at the start of year, they wouldn't get paid until 24th March'

And this, 'In a survey for Teachers? TV, two thirds of the 823 teachers polled online said they felt stressed by teaching, often during lessons. Seventy-one per cent cited a lack of respect from pupils as being a major contributing factor.
Many teachers told the researches they worked longer hours than EU rules permit and 60% blamed the amount of paperwork. Forty-four per cent of those surveyed cited large class sizes as being the cause of their stress, while three-quarters said they felt the head teacher or senior management were inadequate in helping them to deal with stress. '

I think that the last sentence of your post is the key B&W

I feel happy in my work because the senior management in the school where I work are very supportive. Most of the kids I teach are great, but we do have a few troublemakers. The kids , in general, know what the outcome will be for poor behaviour, as the dicipline policy is reasonable and consistant. Beacsue of this, we don't have that many probelms in clssrooms. And when we do, the Senior Mangament are very suppportive.

Without that, behaviour would suffer, and all the staff would be considerabley more stressed