I'm beginning to think that job sharing for teachers doesn't work very well in primary school

[flashharriet]

I have 3 children and each of them have had years with job sharing teachers and years with just one class teacher. Having read many education threads on MN over the years, I know how hard it is for teachers with young children to juggle the needs of their own children with the needs of the children they teach and so a lot will opt for part time. But having just looked back at my children's time in primary school to date, I've realised that without exception, their "duffest" years have been those years when they've been taught by job sharers.

I'm now wondering whether part-timers would be better suited to secondary schools where pupils are used to moving around and having a number of different teachers anyway; certainly I had two different teachers each year for English, for example, and it didn't present any problems AFAI can remember. Communication is much harder with job-sharing teachers and IME consistency between job sharers seems to be an issue too.

I'd love it if we could have a good discussion about this and have therefore deliberately not posted in AIBU! But I'd be interested whether others have found this too (posting this thread was prompted by reading Greeny's current thread about trying to deal with two job-sharing teachers) or whether we've just been very unlucky.

I agree that it is a management issue. All the individual teacher can do is request part time hours. It is up to the management team to ensure that whatever happens, it is in the best interests of the school.

There is no excuse for poor communication, for children feeling confused about huge changes in routine or for parents not knowing which teacher to approach. If this is happening the parent has every right to approach the head and should do so.

However job shares need to exist and be made workable. The alternative, as many have said, is to lose huge numbers of talented teachers and surely people don't want to see that happen?

For what it's worth, I am a PT teacher. I put a lot of time and effort into liaison with colleagues, I did not go back to school just before the summer holidays (although as someone has said this is an entitlement) but waited until September (I am lucky that I can afford to do so), I did not take the whole year as I wanted to be there at the start of the school year for the sake of the children.

I am shocked at some of the attitudes to teachers (for example, the idea that some teachers just use it as a job to fill in between maternity leaves?! What does that mean?) Also I find the idea of being able to time pregnancies so carefully in order to get the most out of the system laughable.

willingly

I can think of many, many other things that must be a nicer way to fill the gap between pregnancies!! Yes,I know I have said teaching is easier than my previous job, and it is, in many ways. But it is still BLOODY HARD WORK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ds had job share teachers in reception. One did Mon-Tues and the other Weds-Fri. I thought it worked well although his year 1 teacher says his class is the worst she has ever had - not listening, poor table manners, poor manners in general. Made me wonder if the job share may have been an issue. It was the first year the school had done it.

Maybe just playground talk, but the majority of parents are grumbling about the amount of people teaching our dc atm, thats what started me worrying.

As I say my dts seem fine, all the teachers and Ta's are very approachable so there is no need for me to listen to playground tittle tattle.

But... 1 little girl has started wetting her bed (never had done so before) other children are having nightmares or having behavioural problems.

I always put these problems down to starting a new year and leave it a while, may settle, but when so many parents grumble.

It just made me think... 6 people teaching is actually rather alot for 5yo's to cope with.

A bit surprised at her actually saying that to you MollieO, not very professional imo

Or MollieO maybe it is just a tricky class.
I find it hard to see why a job share would specifically cause bad manners?

The whole point of starting this thread was to have a debate with others who have experience of job sharing teachers. I am heartened that there are so many positive examples where this is working brilliantly, so I will say (again) that I have identified that any problems seem to be down to mismanagament and poor communication within our school.

BTW, I wasn't in a fortunate position to be able to give up working, I had to retrain to do something more child/part time friendly. We were stony broke for a few years. And surely I've read umpteen threads on here from lawyers where their clients certainly expect them to put work in front of their family? I'm not saying it's right, but it certainly happens in other professions.

And finally, I have the greatest respect for the work that teachers do, especially in the current climate of paperwork, box ticking and testing. But the great thing about MN is that you can hear the experiences of so many different people from different schools. Sharing that knowledge and debating whilst we do it has to be a good thing?

I think that there will be more of it, not less. The job is sometimes too much for one person, if they want a satisfactory home life.I would happily do a job share, with the right person, but not full time again.

Apologies re that flashharriet, the way i read your post I thought you had stopped working altogether.

I'm sorry that it isn't going well for your children - but please remember that class dynamics, school management, support staff, etc etc the list is endless - all play a huge part in your child's experience - not just the teacher(s)!

Despite all of your very sensible comments, I'm afraid this one really grates "I'm now wondering whether part-timers would be better suited to secondary schools" - ?!?!

I have apologised for that one at least twice caz10

Putting this debate aside for a moment, do you have experience of split year classes? I'm just wondering whether the fact that we have these as well compounds any problems?

Oh sorry! OK, truce!
(marking you see, in an effort to maintain communication with my job share partner )

Seriously though, I do hope that things improve should the situation arise again for one of your dcs.

I don't actually, but there's bound to be someone on here who does. I can see how it would add an extra dimension of difficulty though, it's one more thing to plan for and if the planning is not great in the first place...

There's such a wide spread in single year classes anyway though - I am Year 6 and ability levels range roughly from Yr3 to Yr7 within my class.

Oh - just had a thought -have they always been mixed, or did they come in as a single year group? Sometimes when they are mixed part-way through school it can upset the apple cart quite a bit

No, we have an intake of 45. Hmm, lots to think about.

My dd had 2 teachers during at ft pre-school nursery. The first one went on maternity leave soon after starting and then came back before the year ended. I never noticed any ill-effects. Both teachers were excellent and knew dd as a person.

I overheard some of the mothers complaining about how disruptive it was going to be. I said I did not find it so at all. I wonder whether sometimes people are a bit precious and find things to complain about. I did at the time think it was a slight dig at working mothers.

I don't get it why a teacher on maternity leave should not come back just before the summer hols. Surely they come back when they come back. My dd and the other children loved seeing the teacher's new baby.

'glinda'

"For me the summer holiday pay issue is one of fairness to the cover teacher. They have worked on contract for perhaps close to a year and then they lose their income in July with no means of getting work in their profession until September."

If the cover teacher is a supply teacher (often the case) then when they leave in July they don't get paid for the summer anyway. Your pay on supply is worked out as yearly salary divided by 192 (max number of days you can work in a year) and you are paid a daily rate on the basis of that. This means you often get a better daily rate than a permanant teacher because you are not paid in the holidays. Thus, someone coming back in July is not depriving the supply teacher of anything. Besides, the permanant teacher is more entitled to that money as it is a fraction of their salary which has been divided evenly over the year.

Ours are purely done on age. If you haven't got a good friend with a birthday very close to your own, you're in for a rough ride .

I haven't had a chance to read all of this but have to comment that the ONLY year my ds had any support for his AS in school was during the year he had job-share teachers. They worked magnificently together, two halves of a whole, communicated in depth and were extremely effective. They worked a week on/week off and we never had a teacher who was too tired to talk or explain and they always had time for parents. Overall it was a very positive experience.

For that reason I wouldn't agree that job sharing generally is a bad thing. It depends on the teachers' attitudes and whether they can work well together. They need to work as a team otherwise it could cause problems.

This thread is really interesting - especially Morosky's point that weighting the whole system in favour of defending women's rights (not just in teaching, by the way), makes it less and less attractive for employers to hire women.

I'm not sure what the solution is - obliging men to take 6 months paternity leave, thus engendering a social change encouraging men also to work pt/job share? It must be the case that the better the deal for the mum, the worse the deal for the employer. That's bound to cause covert discrimination.

My children are all in job share classes, because it's a bilingual programme, so the French and English teachers do alternate days. The little ones have a ft nursery assistant too. I am very impressed at how well the teachers know my children 2 weeks in, considering they each have 2 classes of 25 on alternate days.

Last year ds2 had a horrible teacher - had it been a job share at least he might have had 1/2 the time with someone nice.

what do you think would happen if all women with children left primary teaching?

would we get a load of returners in their 40s and 50s after their children had grown older?

would we get more men in primary teaching?

or would we just end up having to shove children into classes of 60 due to a shortage?

dd(Yr 4) has a job share class teacher and it seems to be working out ok so far, now that the children know the expectations. They are at an age where they are starting to have more specialist teachers and move around during the day anyway so having 3 days of one and two of another is ok. The core subjects have been clearly defined and timetabled as to who is teaching which. Have my suspicions one may shortly be about to announce she is off on ML mid year though, so not sure how that may work out.

Readin this there does seem to be an awful lot of difference - as one might expect - between a planned, long-standing jobshare, where everyone knows what is going on, and a temporary situation where a teacher is on maternity leave / ill etc.
DD had the latter situation in her Yr 1 class when her teacher was taken ill - they had about 2 weeks of total chaos with a different teacher every day, and then a patchwork of teachers for the next couple of months. Unsurprisingly, it wasn't great for the class - or the teachers, I would imagine.
Her friend was in the class above, and had a regular job-share arrangement, with the HT teaching 2 days and another teacher for 3 days, and it appeared to be absolutely fine.
I suppose I'm saying that its not fair to compare the situations, I'm sure a long term jobshare can be absolutely fine, short term make do situations are inevitable but always going to be hard.