Four day teaching week

[Ralphiethedog]

Jenny Gilruth has said that the Scottish government could cut the amount of time teachers spent in the classroom at the same time as delivering better outcomes for pupils.

Can someone please explain how this is supposed to work? It seems illogical to me. Surely having their class teacher in the classroom is always going to deliver a better outcome for children than them NOT having their class teacher in the classroom?

Am I missing something here, or does our esteemed education secretary think that she can say what she likes and we’ll swallow it like gospel?

Sorry to side track but someone up thread said teachers are poorly paid. My relative is mid 30s and on @ 50k. And that’s with no extra responsibilities, so not poorly paid in my opinion. However, she does have to deal with some awful behaviour in class, so it can be difficult.

Do non-teachers understand that lessons don’t just magically appear, fully formed? Every hour I teach, I have to plan it. It has to be on a written short-term and medium-term plan. I have to make the (differentiated) resources for it. I have to produce the slides for it. Then afterwards I have to mark it and assess it. For every hour of teaching. I teach 16 hours a week but I am part time. I work over 40 hours a week for part time pay. On top of that, there’s the break duties, clubs, staff meetings, parents evenings, displays, answering emails. And increasingly my PPA disappears to cover other staff’s absence because the school can’t afford supply teachers. So yeah, more PPA would really help me, and actually my students too as I’d have more time and be less burnt out.

Does anyone have a link to the government planning for resourcing this - because if a FTE teacher is with class 4 days a week, they need to pay at least 0.2 FTE as well for another teacher to cover the other day.
It just sounds like another nice idea which no extra money will be given for, and is therefore unworkable except by children only going to school 4 days a week (primary in Edinburgh is already only 4.5 days in school as state schools have a half say Friday).

It seems a great shame if it's really impossible to save any time by sharing resources with other teachers (whether at the same school or not) and from previous years.

That's unusually high.

I teach History. We share resources in our dept, divvy out new schemes of work etc so that we all contribute to a shared drive. This does save time and means that all students get the same core content no matter which History teacher’s classroom they walk into. Of course we adapt a bit for our own style. Sometimes we ‘magpie’ ideas and bits and pieces from other teachers in the History community. It can save some time for sure. But the best lessons are nearly always the ones that you conceived, researched info for and planned yourself. You can talk your dept through your thought process and if you have a very similar style to another dept member it’s nearly as good as, but random lessons from a shared bank somewhere are never as good in the delivery. So it’s not impossible at all just probably not preferable for a lot of teachers.

Some schools in the West MIdlands already have a 4•5 week finishing at 1pm on a Friday.

it's really really not... the majority of teachers in Scotland will be on £50k+. the minimum pay for a teacher who has worked for 6 years since completing their PGDE is currently £52,614.
https://www.eis.org.uk/pay-and-conditions-of-service/salary-scales

There are some schools in Scotland using creative solutions and a friend of mine was in one where the kids have a day of the week where they're not in a classroom as such, and it's more activity-based with a different teacher. I don't know how the logistics of it worked but she was quite happy with it. A friend has just moved to Renfrewshire and her kids school finishes early on a Friday.

My worry about it is for things like job share - my daughter has two teachers that job share and at the beginning of the year one of them was doing other things to the point it was chopping and changing every single week - one week she had 4 different teachers which just isn't stable enough for primary school. I'm supportive of supporting teachers and they do need non-class time, but it has to implemented properly because chaos for children isn't acceptable.

That salary is incredibly high for Scotland. Bear in mind that in much of Scotland house prices are low (relative to England). Then take into account a good public sector pension and long holidays. I absolutely appreciate that it's a very tough job and that teachers work long hours, but most jobs I see advertised locally (not in Edinburgh) pay less than half that and don't include a decent pension or long holidays. Teaching is also strongly unionised, which is an added advantage.

yeah i think so too - and I'm married to a teacher. given that it's actually officially a p/t salary to account for the additional leave i think some teachers massively underestimate how far above an average salary they are...

it's not a job i could do but i also couldn't be a carer and they get paid a LOT less!

I think I get paid ok (top of pay scale). Most teachers I know don’t especially complain about pay, although it has lost value in last 15 years with below inflation pay rises and freezes. English teacher pay scales are significantly lower though. When teachers strike it is rarely about pay, but pay and conditions are the only things we are allowed to strike over. Last round of strikes were more about the pay rise being unfunded and had to come out of existing budgets and teachers knew what the effect on pupils that would have - usually support staff/teaching assistant redundancies. So although officially it had to be about pay it was actually about underfunding of schools.

Before anything else I’ll say that I’m a big supporter of teachers … but my familiarity is not with the Scottish education system so can I ask you to explain why all this planning is necessary of new every time? Can’t detailed lesson plans with differentiation and outcomes built in be done for the whole teaching year for each subject and reused with yearly or less frequent updating review by a nominated panel? Why isn’t this done nationally?

It would help if it was done centrally. I believe France works like that. But in England - the curriculum changes. Topics change. Expectations change. Teachers are put in different year groups against their wish. Mixed age classes mean work can’t be used year in year. I have been teaching for 20 years, and of that, only 2 or 3 years have I been able to reuse what I did the year before. Even if planning was centralised, every cohort is different. You still need to differentiate what’s planned. Get the resources ready. Mark it (one set of English books alone can take 1.5 hours, and that’s an experienced teacher). Assess it. Put it on the tracker. Then do your break duties, attend all the meetings and answer all the emails. I wish people understood what goes into teaching. I teach 4 hours a day but work 7, and I am really experienced and efficient.

There are often banks of lessons. However in primary you need to teach to the children in front of you and we are expected to differentiate to meet their needs. Lots of resources you can access don’t work for individual classes. Also, part of the job involves teacher creativity and it would bd a sad situation if that was taken away with nationally implemented schemes of work.

Our job isn’t poorly paid. However, unless you want to go into management, then you reach the top of the scale after 6 years and there’s nowhere to go. We should want highly experienced teachers, carter teachers, in our schools.

Just the usual contentious remark to add- we are not paid for all our holidays. Many are closure days where we are not paid and our salary is pro rata across the year

Sorry. This sounds really inefficient to me and involves a lot of reinventing the wheel. Also where’s the quality control if everyone is doing different things?

In some countries the time spared from this basic task is used for teachers to consult together to discuss how best to work with and convey knowledge to individual groups or pupils - teacher expertise can be employed for differentiation and maximising achievement in the cohort rather than wasted on curriculum planning.

Additionally I never understood why during the Covid lockdown period (and beyond that for vulnerable children) the BBC, the UK’s national state controlled and taxpayer funded broadcaster, didn’t run daily classes on tv for children at all levels of primary education at least. It shouldn’t have been that hard to do! Surely there was little more important. Maybe the absence of a central agreed lesson plan / parameters partially explains that.

Yes - tons of reinventing the wheel!! And the variation in lessons is HUGE across schools. It is crazy but it’s the way it is. Only the government can change it. In my opinion, education needs to be taken out of government hands and a non-political body full of experienced teachers and school leaders should run it.

Lesson planning to meet the needs of the class in front of you isn’t a basic task though. It’s the central part of learning and teaching.

Unsure why theres a bit of deviation about England, this is Scotsnet. Scotland teachers pay is alright, our union is good luckily. We don't need to mess around with justifying TLRs or what have you. The 4 day week thing is a Scottish government proposal. I'm in primary and I'm torn. Something has to give, the workload is absolutely insane with planning etc. Doctors where I am won't refer for neurodevelopmental investigations, all must be done through school. Takes a phenomenal amount of time. ASN in school with limited support is exhausting, we are generally the only adult in the room the majority of the time. Spread of ability in classes is HUGE. Kids attention span is very short on the whole so I have to plan my lessons to be limited input, relatively active, motivating etc. I have to write it up, deliver and assess it. I often dont get planning time and the max we get is generally 50 min chunks 3 x a week. (2hr50 in total). We strike over salary because salary and conditions are the only thing we can strike over. Conditions are fairly hard to strike over unless its directly related to our working hours. Im contracted 35 hours a week, 22.5 contact time and the rest is planning, assessing, hours of school development time, improvement priorities, moderating, meeting parents. I also have to create an inspiring and nurturing environment on a limited budget. Certainly don't have TAs to prep resources or put up displays, theyre generally looking after kids who need 1:1 but this comes out of school budget. I usually work 50-60 hours a week. It's exhausting, but I still love my job. Equally, I'd rather not leave my class as behaviour tends to spiral without the usual class teacher. But I need time to prep that isnt the evenings when I should be with my own family. I dont know what the answer is at this point.

I taught with teachers from Australia, Canada, States etc. They were totally shocked by the lack of prep time. British teacher’s have such a crazy amount of contact time during the school day, it’s no wonder they are working long, long hours.

It appears this plan is more Scottish Government magical thinking- likely to cost £310 million but there's nae money pal

https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/25659233.education-chiefs-warn-310m-cost-scotgov-rcct-plan/

How am I supposed to plan individual work for my 150 students, covering KS3, KS4, KS5 in biology, chemistry, physics and psychology if I'm with my classes all day? I'm good, but not that good. As it happens, 10% is not enough time and I spend approximately 600 hours a years working beyond my contracted hours, simply to keep my head above water. And then I get used for cover.......😞

But lesson planning is not curriculum planning. This is not what teachers are spending most of their time on in PPA.

Lesson planning is planning for differentiation and making plans and resources for how certain children will access or be challenged by the learning. This is exactly what takes the time.

Does it not help if you use setting, so that the strong children (at maths for example) are in the same class and can be taught challenging stuff in an appropriate way, and the weak children are in a different class and different teaching techniques can be used for them? So much less differentiation is needed within the class and everyone is encouraged to reach their potential.