can't be 'polite' and good any longer....

[swallowedAfly]

ds goes to a village primary with all the subsequent over-reliance on parents wealth, education, time, etc. re: assuming sahms are the norm, money is plentiful for fanciful trips and activities, we all know how to sew up costumes at the drop of a hat etc.

that's fine. i chose to live here. however....

homework is way over the top in terms of quantity and right from day one of school. one part of homework (there is loads) is the 'learning log' which is pretended to be something children could do indepndently and consolidates learning. except in reality it is not, by a long shot.

i've put up with it and put up with and felt enslaven to doing it until today when i've had enough. this week for ds (6yo and one of the most able in his year) it says, "show me what you've learned about number bonds up to 20 and what patterns you can see". then there's a blank page.

i don't know why (because this is far from the worst that's come home) but today i've had enough and found myself writing on the page that i have no idea what the learning objective is, what outcomes they're hoping for or how the hell they see this as differentiated. i've also asked how they think a parent with numeracy or literacy problems would tackle this task and whether they would actually set this as a task in class to 6yos and expect a meaningful outcome.

there is no context, no structure, no literacy support, no prompts nothing. same as ever. sometimes the tasks don't even relate to anything they've been learning.

am i totally unreasonable or would you after a year or so be fed up too? i am (if it's not obvious) an ex teacher and i know what education is supposed to be about and this is not it. homework should be meaningful. how could a 6yo read that question and face a blank page and do something a teacher could look at and assess to see what they've learnt? they couldn't.

on top of this learning log (given on a friday and expected in by tuesday) daily reading and signing of reading book is expected plus other bits and bobs. he's 6! he's been getting this since 5 at a point where some kids couldn't even write let alone face a blank page and an open ended task and produce something yet they'd get in trouble if they didn't. this is just a test of parents surely? and an unfair one given it assumes knowledge and literacy that some parents won't have?

sorry for long random rant but help! i'm not playing this game anymore and i'm ready to speak up. it's a joke.

and to state the obvious - if parents couldn't work there'd be no taxes to PAY for education and teachers salaries.

so teachers scoffing at parents daring value the need to get to work is rather short sighted.

I teach in Scotland. Policy in place in all 4 of my neighbouring LAs. As I said, was brought in again after a pretty atrocious winter about 6 years ago where everything ground to a halt. Every school has a record on their database of the staff who should report to them if weather means the roads are closed. In this way the schools should be able to open as they will be properly staffed. It gets more complicated when schools usually have their lunches delivered (lots of kitchens have been closed to cut costs) as I'm not sure what would happen if the food couldn't be delivered. We haven't had a snow day in a couple of years now. The last time there was one the teaching staff were in clearing snow around the building and gritting as the building could not be safely opened to pupils.

yes - context is everything indy.

of course there are areas where snow means serious barriers to travel etc.

for most of us in middle england it means a bit of inconvenience and having to get the de-icer out most of the time.

Just a very practical point, harking back way into the thread - what subject did you teach? The thing is, for me it's the marking that makes my working hours long - and of course, not having taught recently you would probably be pre-Ofsted friendly, formative marking on every piece of work. I obviously can't mark in a lesson (well, I sometimes mark a few maths questions with the children I am working with at that moment, but certainly not a whole class worth of books). And since I do 1:1, clubs etc at lunchtime, there isn't much time then.

Each day brings at least 96 books (that's 3 subjects, 32 children in my class). A bad day with 5 different 'writing stuff down' lessons will produce 5 x 32 books, but I do try to avoid those!

Obviously, as you will remember, it's really important to feed back straight away, and to flex the next day's planning accordingly - and of course if i do miss e.g. English on Monday, that just means 2x pieces of English work on Tuesday as they have English and Maths every day.

Even with extraordinary time management, hal an hour before and after the teaching day wouldn't get me through all those books.

I know that secondary teachers do mark less, as I've been in discussion with DS's school because he needs feedback about how he's doing against a stretching target. But even so, as presumably you taught 5 lessons a day or so back to back, how did you get all the marking done?? Or did you do a 'light marking' subject and few GCSE / A-level classes?

teacher you see what I am pointing out is that there is one rule for teachers and schools (and pupils) and another for everyone else who works in the private sector. If people in the private sector can safely go to work why can't teachers who do the same trip than them can't do it safely?

If you had read carefully, you will have seen that I completely agree with you that if the school is cold or there is a burst pipe it is completely normal to close the school.
And some schools hardly close ever. As it seems that yours is one of them.

What I a trying to point out are discrepancies. One school is close as soon as there is a bit of snow. The other less than one mile away is open. Why?
One person can go from A to B to go to work in the private sector but a teacher who goes from A to B to their school can't because it's dangerous.

And yes I do need to go to work. Because if I don't I am not getting paid at all. (Self employed there. No work = no money = no heating was our situation a few years ago). So pretty important for my dcs don't you think? And important for their own safety too.
So who do you think is right? Me for putting my dcs 'safety at risk' not that was an emotionally charged comment at all by taking them to school even when it is snowing a bit. Or you for asking me to be flexible when I can't and make my dcs go back to an unheated house in the middle of winter, in the snow? OK just as emotionally charged comment

As far as I am concerned this is NOT a teacher bashing comment. teachers aren't taking that sort of decisions. HT do.
But they do it on the basis that at least one parent is flexible enough to be at home for the dcs whenever they think it's needed. And that's not appropriate for the way our society works now.

To be fair too, one of the main issue our HT had to deal with was teachers unable to come because ... the school where their own dcs were going was shut.... Nice ripple effect on how a couple schools closing a bit too easily can cause problem at a larger scale.

what i don't get with the defensive bit is why defend SHIT practice if you're confident in your own practice? why not say blimey that's SHIT! i do much better than that, my school has a different practice, etc and support the parents experiencing shit educational practice in seeing that they have the right to better?

i don't get knee jerk defend even the crappiest practice, being described by someone with education and experience enough to assess shit practice and pretend it's great and the idiot parent must just not get it?

if you do better than shit undifferentiated homework with utter disregard for socio economic barriers, sen, efl, etc etc etc then why defend those who don't? you make it look like you must be as bad as them to defend them so heartily.

and once again swallowedAfly noone id scoffing at parents daring to working and pay taxes as we are working parents who pay taxes something you choose to ignore.

brambleandapple if lifesaving surgeons and profilers are regarding schools as free child care designed to fit around their personal/professional needs I would be very surprised but would be happy to explain why they need to rethink.

teacher i taught on average 5 different groups of thirty kids per day spanning 7 year groups with planning to do and marking for all of them obviously and mixed ability and differentiation for each class and particular attention to those with specific sen in each group. so no it wasn't that i was in some cushty position of never having to do any marking or planning.

it is part of why i'm slightly baffled by primary teachers moaning about work load when they only have 30ish children to get to know, plan for and assess and report on a year compared to the 400 or so i had to teach.

i know it's hard work - most jobs are to be honest - but i guess i don't buy into the whole harder than you can ever imagine and martydom of the century business.

The worst thing is that I am as afr as you can from being a teacher hater type of person. If anything, I am the one to defend teachers as I think they have a very hard job indeed, made harder by the demands of Ofsted etc.. which might not be always appropriate and helpful to teaching.

But the schools opening and closing is a different matter and as indy said, it is possible to have some plans in place in case of snow just like any other private company does

We have closed once in the 10 years I have been at my school and on several occasions have asked parents to stagger arrival and collection times if they could as the roads around the school were treacherous and if everyone had arrived at the same time chaos would have ensued! The day that we closed, the police advised ALL traffic to stay at home, the taxis ( who bring a good proportion of our children) refused to run, there were no school dinners and there was NO WAY I was venturing out!
And I live in middle England!

why do they need to rethink mrz? are they terribly unreasonable to expect state funded schools to fulfil their remit and take care of their children for 6hrs a day whilst educating them to a reasonable standard?

should they give up saving lives and performing open heart surgery to support teachers?

i want my child to be taught and taken good care of at school, i also want him to have good heart surgery when it's needed. to achieve both we all have to do our jobs.

Well I wouldn't have thought school hours were adequate for their professions swallowedAfly would you?

I'd like to be a fly on the wall for that conversation mrz!

But you see spaniel I personnally wouldn't complain about 1 day of closure in 10 years.

I do complain about several days of closure a year.

Last year when the snow started, the school closed for 2 days. Then it was clear the snow was going to be there for a while and school stayed opened in much worse conditions... So why did it close in the first place?

no, no please tell us why they should rethink and how you'd explain to them, hrt payers doing worthy careers, that they need to not rely on schools and never see it as a form of childcare.

likewise i'd love to see you pull of that level of haughty self importance with someone who literally saves lives on a daily basis.

because it could freshC. because it's caught in a culture of feeling like a grandiose beneficent favour rather than an integral part of society that needs to work 'with' everything else rather than see itself as a special circumstance. time to catch up.

mrz maybe not the hear surgeons and profilers, but it is a possibility.

However it is very likely a mother caring for an elderly relative, a nurse, or a police officer.

Interestingly my neighbour is a cardiac surgical nurse and didn't make it to theatre one day last winter due to the roads from our village being blocked (we tried to dig her out and push the car up the hill unsuccessfully) ... I walked the mile and a half to the nearest passable road where my head picked up me and 2 colleagues to take us into school in his 4X4 ...we arrived late and anxiously watched the steady fall of snow all day until the last child left (actually 8 inches fell during the day on top of what was already there) making the journey and walk home to my family a nightmare ...

even if it's not the only service they rely on for their children's care and ability to work it will be an integral part of it.

but you think they shouldn't rely on it? what should they do instead? should children of working parents who actually have to work have full time nannies on standby?

don't teachers have elderly relatives brambleandapple

mrz - that does indeed sound like a nightmare as i'm sure it was for every.single.other.person.who.had.to.get.to.work.that.day.

btw some of us walk several miles to work every day you know even when it snows.

swallowedAfly as a widow with 2 small children and elderly parents to care for and who needed to work I know the importance of childcare ... ill children who can't go to school and a teacher mum who can't just stay at home to care for them!

so why the utter lack of compassion and awareness for others then?

is it part of the 'i've had to suffer so you fuckers better suffer too' school of thought or what?

mrz if they do they never see them because teachers live at the school. They sleep on camp beds in the hall, rising at dawn to do marking and photocopying and paperwork and displays. They then clean all the toilets and clear snow from the school grounds, unblock the drains before doing special voice exercises to enable them to shout at all the children for 6 hours.