Secondary science department - no technician

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Any science departments in secondary operating with no technician due to budget cuts?
Just wanting to know what the procedure is - do you get extra PPA time to set up/clear up/check stock levels etc?
Seems like this is going to be us in September.

TIA

That’s a huge safety issue. I pity the person who signed that off. I’d check with your union about the working/contact time you’ll have to miss to accommodate the extra work. What have you been told so far?

No practicals ?
I know a school that made all the t. A redundant
had to hire back to cover legal requirements of EHCP

buget cuts are real and biting

@SuperSange haven't been told anything yet apart from the technician being accepted to get voluntary redundancy (probably won't be either and just expected to carry the extra workload) which is why I want to ask for a meeting to discuss it. But without knowing what the norm is, i'm not sure what my expectations should be 🤔
@pimplebum definitely! And if no practicals will be the outcome, I want to make clear I wont be held responsible for the grades!

The head of centre has to sign a declaration form each year (for GCSE) to say the practicals have been undertaken… I imagine no form could mean no results are issued. I wonder what your Headteacher would feel about that?

You won’t be able to carry out practicals. The technicians do a huge amount of work behind the scenes for practical work.

We have 5 part time technicians at our school - we couldn't function without them.

The school i worked at, had 3 technicians 15 years ago, then 2 then one after covid.(first moved jobs, second retired at 70) and the last one retired last summer. They first one to.leave was the only one with radioactive handling certification, so quite a few A level experiments shouldn't have been set up after he left. No clue what they are doing now, last i heard if teachers wanted equipment they had to set up and clean in their frees, so i imagine practicals just aren't happening.

The students will either watch you do the practical, or watch a video of someone doing the practical. It doesn't have to impact their grades, but it might impact their enjoyment of the subject.

It will definitely impact on their enjoyment and understanding and numbers for science A-levels will drop. So sad.

(Ex) school science tech here.

It will be chaos. The role I took up had been vacant for 6 months. Science staff had just grabbed things and abandoned them. No solutions had been made up. Chemistry will be most affected, but microbiology and enzyme pracs in Bio will also be tricky.

Assuming you are a member of CLEAPS id suggest phoning them for advice. It is one thing managing without because someone has quit and you are desperate to recruit, and quite another to deliberately cut the job.

Its a very worrying sign of how the science department us viewed, and if I were you, id be looking for a new school.

Amendment to above (too slow to edit).
By "if you are a member of CLEAPS", I mean the school, not necessarily you as an individual.

I think you need to seriously consider who is taking on responsibility for the chemicals. There are legal responsibilities for annual stock check and safety checks, and consideration for SYC (if you don't know what this is, then that is also concerning).
Then there are the safety checks of equipment and PPE, plus the ordering of all the above.
So, with those things in mind, it looks like your school will have to dispose of chemicals (or at least, the most concerning ones) and go to watching videos and kitchen chemistry.
What a shocking outcome for pupils!

As a science technician this would seriously worry me. I often think SLT have no idea what we actually do and how we facilitate science practicals but also all the extra work required for health and safety.
I would definitely recommend speaking to CLEAPSS if your school is a member. They will be able to give you supporting evidence as to why this is a bad idea. How many teachers are in your department? And how many teaching hours each week, you can work out the required level of technician support needed. If you only had one tech already then you where probably already understaffed.
This is a seriously worrying trend and I've noticed more and more schools trying to get away with less technician support. It just means jobs that need doing don't get done.

I mean who is going to do all the solution prep for chemistry, the work required to setup microbiology. All the stock take and the fixing of broken equipment. There are certain practicals that need testing before using to make sure they will work in the classroom.
Who will do all the annual lab checks? Who will regularly test equipment so that it's always working when needed? What about all the washing up, some practicals take almost as much Time cleaning up as setting up, where will this extra time come from? Will you be given more training in order to do this? More PPA in order to do the extra work?
I assume the answer will be no to all of the above and then you will end up with a school doing no practical work. If you do A-levels then there is the practical element of the course that students have to do and these practicals often require more prep time then GCSE. If you don't do A-level then you would be setting your students up with no good practical skills if you can't facilitate practical work for those who want to go on to do A-level.

The only teacher I've worked with who worked in a school with no technician, work at a really small private school with only 2 teachers.

I have a friend who works in a school like this. She is second in dept and she preps loads of the pracs, along with the hod.

@SKeay put this so much better than I was going to. I used to be a technician and safe management of hazardous materials was within the technician remit. It wouldn't stop if you stopped running practicals. Also, depending on the age of the school you could easily have items that are extremely expensive and awkward to dispose of. Certainly where I worked, it was cheaper for the school to keep these items (and manage them safely) than arrange for their disposal.

Also agree over A level practicals. They could easily take me half a day to set up (depending on number of students, equipment etc). At least the staff were kind and staggered the practice ones from previous papers 😂
Are they going to give you time to do those?

Have you contacted Cleapss? They might be able to provide advice. I know they have a document which is all about how many technician hours are required/ recommended. And I know most schools as soon as you say Cleapss suggest they do start to listen. Because it’s a H&s safeguarding thing.

Thank you all, will definitely contact CLEAPSS and see what advice they can provide on the situation.
The technician who is going was already shared between us (science department) AND technology department (cooking and woodwork etc). So to get rid of her is INSANE in my eyes!
But, its happening.. so just trying to cover my own back tbh as I don't want to be left with responsibilities I can't undertake. I'm also working in minimum PPA time as it is due to the financial situation, so can't imagine this changing next year either!