Teachers speaking out about parents' long working hours

[vestandknickers]

Here.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-27027677

Interesting. I think it is good that this is being raised as an issue.

I am not anti working parents at all, but surely a society that thinks it is ok for children to be at school from 8am to 6pm needs to look at itself.

Hopefully it is still a small minority of children who spend five days a week at school for these hours, but it is good that teachers are speaking out before it becomes seen as an acceptable norm.

I also don't understand why the government is making it impossible to have children if you don't earn a mint. If they take away a huge source of income for sahms then they may be in a position where they are in poverty if they work due to child care and in poverty if they don't...

Thurlow

I was referring to the usual bashing of sahp, benefits and making out the sahp has something against working parents.
It never ceases.

alita7

I'm sure they would too. I often feel that some on here make their own minds up with half the facts. I'm sure they believe I have hundreds of pounds for doing nothing. We have one dd who is dependant and receive a small amount of tax credit and still get cb @ £80 per month. I am very lucky to still get this when others don't, but its nowhere near a wage and I wouldn't expect it to be.

Alita, I know what you mean. And to be honest, if DD grew up to be amazing at music or sport, say, and the only way we could get her into a specialist school that could set her up for life was for me to quit working and then claim a free or heavily subsidised bursary then maybe I would do it. Who knows.

But I'd bloody well be completely open about why I was doing it, and not claim it was just the way things were done.

Boffin

Tell us about these people who go into music and conservatoires, not attending specialist schools.
Bearing in mind I know thousands from all over the world, and also know that most of these people who attended specialist school and then the same conservatoire often teach there. Or do they not have a career in music.

Morethan, it's not bashing SAHP. Most of the other mums I know around here are SAHP. Good on them. I'm not ashamed to admit that however much I love my DD, I'm not cut out not to work somehow and couldn't be a SAHM. It's not an easy job at all, especially when you have more than one DC. And I would never bash anyone on benefits - if they needed them. But personally I strongly believe that benefits are there to support those in need - people who are out of work through illness, emergency, redundancy etc - not those who chose not to work.

The only time posters on MN have an issue with SAHP is when the SAHP parent essentially claims that they are doing it because they love their child more than two f/t working parents do.

Thurlow

I'm off to see my family now, but please look at the websites for these schools and then tell me I haven't been open and this isn't how it is done.

I'll happily look at the websites if you tell me them. But I doubt any of them say that families should deliberately cut down on or keep low their income to ensure they get subsidized fees...

I know several professional musicians. I know a few people who went to Chet's. The groups have NO intersection. None. The people I knew who went to Chet's are amateurs. The people I know who are professional (and I'm talking properly famous in a couple of cases) didn't go to specialist music school (and in two cases didn't even go to conservatoire).

I don't know thousands though. Mind you I don't know thousands of people full stop. Let alone thousands in one sector.

Well at my music conservatoire there wasn't a single person who had been to a specialist music school for their secondary education. Nada. Not one.

morethan

It's none of my business and I'm not saying that I wouldn't do it

But you are definitely and without question pulling a fast one

And again not saying that I wouldn't do it...but I can see why two working parents get pissed off when SAHMs are claiming benefits which must surely contribute to their ability to stay at home

Thinking about the story in the OP, boarding school is pretty long hours in school really...

Ha! FallenMaddonna

You know what potatoprint before I was mildy annoyed, but now I'm really annoyed. I am all for a helping hand for those who need itt but I am not in favour of taxpayer dollars funding lifestyle choices for middle class people who don't want to work. If this was a dole recipient saying they didn't want to work because it didn't suit them and anyway they'd only be slightly better off, people would be outraged. And yet here you are, claiming pretty much the same thing - but not only that, saying your choices represent "good values" and even more gobsmackingly "good financial management". Give me a break.

I earn good money and I pay high taxes and I don't begrudge that. Not only that I am 75% through paying off (the equivalent of) a 35,000 pound student loan, with which I got 2 degrees and admitted to the Bar. My deducations are 12% of about 90% of my gross income. I also pay 3% into my Govt pension scheme - miserly, but that's the best I can do at the moment, betwen managing our huge mortgage and saving for immiment maternity leave. (I'll get stat parental leave pay for that which will cabout cover the supermarket shop for 14 weeks). At my top tax rate about 50% of each dollar ends up in my bank account.

During our 20s we shared flats with friends & saved towards a deposit. WE didn't have the option of "boarding with friends" like you potatoprints or living at home like your DS. We were flatting in London which isn't the most affordable city in the world.

Don't sit here and tell us "you can manage it if you scrimp and save like I did". DH & I am paying a mortgage that is astronomically higher than any mortgage our parents ever had, even taking into account the higher interest rates they would have paid in the 70s/80s. We are paying off tertiary education that they got for free. We are saving towards our retirement knowing there will be no government pension, while they've hit 65 and are happily collecting their money.

THIS is why 2 incomes and warp around care is needed to have a middle class quality of life in most big cities in 2014.

More than: I think you are mistaking people commenting on your personal values and attitude with 'sahp bashing'. The vast majority of SAHP are not cynically milking every system they can find for all it's worth, and then arguing that those systems aren't making enough people who earn higher than average incomes pay so they don't have to.

I'm enjoying the hypocrisy of morethan thinking of sending her DD to boarding school because they believe it will be the best thing for her - yet those families who decide that both parents working is the best thing are somehow wrong and not putting the child first.

Gennz - very belatedly - thanks! And I love it too.

Morethan, I'm astounded that you can't see that people are looking at the sum of your posts in the past to point out inconsistencies and problems. That when you say it's best for children to have a parent at home full time, that you are criticising two-income families. And that when people criticise your choices, they aren't bashing all SAHPs.

I think being SAHP is a valid choice. I'd be chuffed to bits if my husband chose it - we could afford for him to do it, but not me without defaulting not only on our lifestyle here which is very good for our family but on our duties to DH's family - we would have to move back to my home country for it to make sense.

As it happens, he doesn't want to. Which is fine because I'm confident our choice is the best for our family now and in the future.

I am actually quite relieved I am not alone in thinking the MoreThans of this world are taking the micky.

The boarding school thing was jaw dropping. SAHP funded by other people who doesn't even have kids at home?!

Bonkers.

For the record I don't have a massive problem with SAHP and indeed practically everyone on here has experience of this state of being during maternity leave or whatever. I do think it's wrong for people only to concern themselves exclusively with their own domestic situation and use that as a basis for justifying all sorts of selfish, introspective, me-my-mine behaviour. For a graduate to do that beggars belief,

From Blackmouse earlier-

soon there will be one huge warehouse where all children are shipped to

perhaps the goverment will find ways with artifical wombs etc, to produce the next generation
while all the people carry on working and the goverment babies/children can start working asap

Morethan and Chunderella I hear you. Chunderella I prefer to take the feminism out of this debate because one of the solutions is to ensure men step up to the mark domestically, but I see your point. You could also argue that capitalism also pushes us into this corner by forcing us into endless production and debt. The banks have done very well out of us competing with each other over property ownership.

Horse you cannot take feminism out of this.

News stories like this don't focus on parents - they focus on mothers. The two income families you are so upset about; the second income earner is the mother in the vast majority of cases. The vast majority of flexible working requests are from mothers, not fathers. That is society's expectation. Therefore when teachers raise concern about parents long hours (and 9-5 is normal not long) they are actually taking about the hours worked by mothers.

I have to say that I don't think many teachers get how pressured full time work in the real world is. My mum is a teacher. She leaves the house at 8am and is generally home by 4 - 4.30, with an hour's break at lunch. "Working late" for her is home by 6 - 6.30. That's my standard hometime. Working late for me is 10, 11pm (thankfully not v often in my job).

She gets 12 weeks' holiday. Yes I know teachers maintain they work through them but (a) I don't think they do and (b) if I had 12 weeks where my office shut down and I could catch up on admin & paperwork it would greatly reduce stress! As a teacher qualified since before 1992 she is entitled to a gobsmacking 306 sick days. I get 5 days a year (the stat entitlement). Friends of mine who are teachers (qual after '92) get 25 sick days a year.

Bit of a tangent & don't get me wrong, I think teachers do a great job and I know it's a hard & at times exhausting job, but teachers who criticise others' working hours can bugger off.

So you are judging all teachers on the fact that you are related to a slacker?
I do know teachers like that, but not many.

I don't think she's a slacker - her experience is typical of most teachers I know. I know about a dozen, between 30 and late 60s.

Teaching hours are definitely easier than the full time hours DH & I put in as lawyers.

On what basis would you say I was calling teachers or my mum slackers?

Teachers who have never worked outside the profession (school, then uni, then teacher training then teaching) often post on here about how their conditions have deteriorated and that if Gove does one more thing to reduce their holidays they will go and find another job - but seem unaware of what other jobs require in terms of working hours. I am a teacher who has worked in business for many years before career change, and the work was at least as tough, and pressured, but without the holidays - what I see around me is a doddle in comparison to the world 'out there'. One HoD I know, is in a job share and complained to me recently that she rarely gets home to sit down for a meal with her family, (on the three days a week she works), until 6pm. Anyone with a professional managerial job in the private sector is much less likely to be in a job share, and would be bemused by anyone moaning that they sometimes don't get home till 6.

And other professionals work in the evening and weekends as well - not confined to teachers.
Teacher often bring out the 'controlling a class of 30' pressure, but I think about nurses, paramedics, police etc who are far more in the frontline of stressful work, how come they don't require 12 weeks holiday a year to de-stress? Feel like a campaign coming on