Job Share classes - disappointed

[glitterfairy88]

We have just been given our DD's class allocation for reception this year. It's a 60 form intake, so 2 classes.

One of the classes is one full-time teacher and the other is two job shares. DD has been allocated to the job share teachers. I'm not sure how I feel about this to be honest. We had hoped that she would be with the full-time teacher who showed us around the school and who is very experienced.

I've had friends who job share as teachers and they find it hard with teachers being on different pages. I am worried things may get overlooked as a result.

Any positive stories?!

When I was in year 4 we had 2 teachers who job shared. They coped just fine, and this was many years ago (I'm 32 now!) don't over think it.

I had job-share teachers in year 5 (so long ago that it was called 3rd year juniors). Wasn't a problem at all.

My DS had job share teachers in year 4 and said they were his favourite teachers ever. Admittedly it may have helped that one of them was male and the computing lead ( he loves computers).

Are you convinced yet @glitterfairy88 ?

Every class will have at least two teachers, as teachers get a half day for planning, preparation and assessment. With jobshare it's just a more even split. Most jobshare partnerships work really well, especially if they've been working together for a while. You might find that they organise it so that that class has a full-time TA, which can help with the continuity.

My daughter was taught by an absolute dream team in Year 5. Both quite different but with the exact same high expectations of work and behaviour. I was broken hearted when they didn't take her into year 6.

I think the concept works really well but the execution can vary. Also a good way of retaining staff post mat leave or closer to retirement. It has also helped to have some continuity as we’ve had 2 teachers on mat leave out of 2yesrs. The first was a job share so still had the continuity of the other teacher for part of week while the cover arrangements were patchy for the mat leave teacher. The second was a full time teacher replaced by a 4 days to 1 day arrangement. I much preferred the formal job share tbh as felt better managed and better split of work. The 4:1 feels more like teacher plus cover.

I do think though that it worked better to have a full time TA with a job share teacher and job share TAs with full time teachers so there is some continuity.

DS had job share last year and it worked pretty well from what I could see (better than the newly qualified teacher this year with another teacher covering 1 day a week to let her have the time outside classroom and it's a composite class). What seems to have helped last year is that the teachers involved have job shared together for years and they always have P1 or P1/2 so they are in a pretty settled routine and have very similar styles.

We have had a job share for my daughters reception year this year. Initially I was a little bit worried and had hoped for the other class.
I couldn't have been more wrong. The teachers worked so well together and I couldn't have asked for a better year for my child. One teacher was off for 6 weeks and the other stepped up and worked full time during this period. They are so lovely and absolutely dedicated to their class.

We've had sets of 2 job share teachers so far. I went into both really positively, thinking of all of the advantages of having 2 refreshed teachers each week and each playing to their strengths.

The first was a disaster - the teachers seemed not to get on and blamed each other for stuff. Then one left, then the other. So we ended up with 2 different teachers by the end of the year, in a poor arrangement.

The second was better, but still not great. The teachers didn't really get to know my DD, which I think was partly due to neither seeing enough of her. That meant that they let her cruise along doing the bare minimum. Now that she has one teacher, she's really formed a constructive relationship with that teacher and it is really clear that was missing when she had job share teachers.

I think that I have learned to pay more attention to what was going on at school and make sure to fill in the gaps or challenge the teachers to fix things as a result.