School Strikes 26th March - Invoicing the LEA

[Bexinder]

Just wanted to share what I'm doing, and I wonder if we can get some sort of campaign going. Lots of UK schools are closed due to teacher's industrial action next Wednesday 26th March. Given that we parents have absolutely no leeway when it comes to taking children out of school during term time and will be hit with heavy fines per child if we do without permission, I'm invoicing my local education authority for failing to provide education on this day. They haven't asked MY permission to allow the school to close.....Now I'm not expecting them to pay this at all, but I am wanting to cause a stink. They can close the school over the pay and pensions row, but I can't take my children out of school for a funeral.
Sorry - rant over... if anyone wants to copy the invoice, let me know and I'll post it. Thanks!

I take it from your silence that you won't be making any more goady accusations re pms, Windy. Good.

I'm becoming quite worried (on the basis of this thread) about the kind of people who are recruited as governors and their level of knowledge and awareness.

I expect most of the schools are academies.

So no point invoicing the LEA.

To be fair I am inherently lazy which is why I went into a job with 13 weeks holiday.

Given that the issue a lot of parents seem to have about te strike is their inconvenience at having to take a day off work I decided to look at what I could earn as a babysitter instead of a teacher. I looked up on uk.care.com what the babysitting rate is per hour in my area considering my experience. I then asked it to calculate my wage per year based on the going rate and then I multiplied it by thirty to take into account the number of children I 'babysit' on a daily basis. Wowsers are we teachers underpaid according to uk.care.com! And we don't even just babysit! We actually seek to impart knowledge too!

Add message | Report | Message poster Somersaults Sat 22-Mar-14 22:59:22
Perhaps different schools are flexible in different ways. Maybe it depends on your HT. But I would have to have an incredibly good reason to be making medical appointments during the school day. I can bring some work home but due to latest safeguarding and data protection policies an awful lot of my assessment, target setting and tracking work can now only be done on site as assessment data cannot be taken home.

Obviously I don't make appointments for minor sniffles during the school day. However during my pregnancy my appointments were often during the school day and I went. After a miscarriage I had some counselling and that was during the school day.

If I was told that I could not take home assessment data, marking and tracking I would quit - immediately!

I can say that my HT has never quibbled about a maternity based appointment (and wouldn't have a leg to stand on if they did!) but GP and dentist appointments in the school day are a no no.

Marking I can bring home but my assessment file and any electronic assessment data on a pen drive for example may not be.

I do all of my data analysis at home, I can also access SIMS from home as well as my pupils files.

My school shuts at 6pm and I am often teaching until 5, I need to be able to do the work at home.

It differs greatly on the type of school you are at I think. Working at an undersubscribed comprehensive trying its hardest to turn things around is for me a very different experience to when I worked at an over subscribed selective school.

I definitely don't get 13 weeks holiday, although I do get 13 weeks for which I'm not paid.

Christmas holidays: spent most of the weekend of 21st/22nd sleeping, 23rd worked all day catching up on KS3 marking. I took Xmas Eve off, & Xmas Day off until everyone went to bed, then did several hours planning through the night. Took Boxing Day off, worked full days 27th-31st marking Controlled Assessments for year 11, New Year's Day off, back in school 2nd & 3rd January setting classroom up etc & meeting with new, inexperienced staff member who needed me to do his planning with him. wrote 60 reports over the weekend of 4th/5th. Term started again on the 6th.

Spring half term: worked full days Monday-Thursday marking year 11 GCSE mocks.

Easter holidays: running a school trip abroad for the first week. Have booked a 3 day break with family & then back into school for at least one day to teach a missed Controlled Assessment to a student who had one of those lovely term time holidays.

Summer half-term: GCSE examiner standardising (to be fair I get paid for that one!), then into school for a minimum of 2 days to run last minute GCSE revision.

& I could, of course, refuse to do all the teaching/revision bits of that - the marking & planning wouldn't go away - but then I wouldn't hit those Performance Management targets...

It just goes to show how different schools are. I do nothing in the holidays, var a quick tidy over the summer and results day. I know of very few staff who come in at all levels of seniority. Have always met my targets and been promoted a few times.

My DD's English teacher, for the last 3 holidays (half terms,etc) has come into school, inc Saturdays for English GCSE revision for the class. And he has a young family. He does it off his own steam. I am eternally grateful to him.

Is your school a comprehensive if you don't mind me asking philoslothy?

I am sure his children are less grateful.

I think primary and secondary schools differ too in the type of work that needs to be done out of school hours and the amount of each type of work. And it differs across different ages within primary too. Ks1 and eyfs have a lot of classroom prep and sorting to be done in terms of continuous provision for the children whereas ks2 have more intensive marking to complete. Our ks2 teachers tend to be gone fairly quickly most Fridays for example while ks1 staff are there until much later as they have to set up activities for Monday morning.

Yes, well almost a comprehensive we use a few to the grammar just over the border - but not many.

Maybe, Philoslothy, but My DD is grateful, and it shows the level of dedication these '13 weeks a year holiday' teachers actually have

somer agree completely, I think primary have it worse tbh, then at secondary English have it worst in terms of all the marking assessment and feedback stuff. I am glad it is relatively easy to mark in my subject, takes hours to fill in all the forms and feedback, response, discussion loop studs, but we have no coursework/controlled assessments in Maths - we just have to teach/tutor small groups after school, Saturdays, holidays etc... To get them through (we do get paid a bit extra for Saturdays and holidays).

To be fair I'm having the marking/revision session year from hell Philoslothy - core, marking heavy subject, & inherited an additional GCSE group from a departing NQT who'd made a right bollocks of their CAs, we found out when she'd gone...plus we've lost the November entry so had to do an extra internally marked mock.

Also, I've somehow ended up with all top/middle sets - that in itself means I do at least 3 more hours marking each week than last year when I had a couple of tiny bottom sets.

I've no intention of doing anything over the summer holiday - usually there are new schemes of learning to write but have agreed with HOD that the Dept will have had my pound of flesh by then, & some other mug can do them.

Like Crazynanna my sons school have run extra GCSE revision days during school holidays to help the children out.
They also run after school lessons for those that want to attend and boost their results.
These sessions are excellent, they do not have to do these extra lessons in their own time.
Although the strike is an inconvenience I fully support them during the strike.

Yup I run revision sessions after school and will be going in during Easter for a 6 hours revision session (I'm part time)- on top of all the music clubs I run.

- 2little1s, so .....you're a teacher are you?

and you know "loads of governors and teachers who support Gove " do you?

and you work for 'OFSTEAD'(your spelling, not mine) do you? .

Oh really?

Now, it wouldn't be very nice of me to accuse you of inventing a load of bollocks just to rile people up, but you have got me sniggering ! seriously though, it is more than evident that you aren't quite able to tell the truth......there, I said it nicely

I presume I'm not the only one who's sniggering over windy's outrage about spellings and misplaced apostrophes by teachers when she herself wrote dont' and the wrong there.

And Performance Management has been established in schools for many years.

That's about all I can be arsed to offer to this ridiculous thread, to be honest. Apart from to point out that most of the 13 weeks' holiday is unpaid.

Back to work...