Schools charging for holiday revision sessions - normal?

[crazymonsters]

Just curious as a local school which my friend's daughter attends is charging £54 a day (or £27 per half-day) for Y12 revision sessions over Easter. Is this normal? I don't know if they have discounts in place for free school meals etc - hopefully they do.

If teachers are working over the whole holidays I'm not surprised schools need to charge, but I guess I am surprised that the sessions are so extensive - every day full time rather than just a couple of freebie sessions covered by school budget.

The school does get very good results, and has the sort of catchment that is prepared to pay, and I expect the money just covers staff overtime rather than making a profit, but even so, it seems a bit intense. Whatever happened to independent revision? I think if I was a student there I would feel the need to be at every session or risk being at a disadvantage.

Are they delivered by the teachers, or a third party?

'Freebie' sessions have never been covered by a school budget where I have worked. It is an EXTRA provided by the goodwill of teachers for which there has never been pay attached. Goodwill that has eroded over the past few years by a variety of factors. Presumably the sessions are optional? Or anyone can pay to have a tutor... same idea.

Wow. Why bother cutting free school meals when schools actively promote massive socioeconomic inequality without being told to?

I hadn't read to the end - you think teachers are paid 'overtime'?!?!?! It is written in the teacher contract 'work such hours as to complete you work.' This is the reason the is a teaching recruitment and retention crisis. It means 50, 60, 70 hour weeks are now the norm.

I agree that independent revision is the way forward. The little darlings need to learn to hold their own hands...

Easter revision sessions are the bane of my life, if you hadn't guess. I've just been 'expected' to do them. And because there was precedence, how could I say no? It's what parents 'expect' and children feel like they're doing hard work, despite being spoon-fed.

DD3'S school has offered revision sessions in the Easter holidays and may half term for years.
When my older 2 DD did them they were free but this year for DD3 there was a £3 fee per session.
She had to order the different subject/content sessions 1- whatever number she wanted and then she was given a list of sessions she had successfully got.
Different subjects were on different days.
She did one 9-3 session, one 12.30-3.30, and one 9-12 and she has a couple more in the may half term.

DS's school (in quite a well-off area) used to offer these at £50 a day over Easter. DD's school, with a lower-income catchment, doesn't, but does offer a few after-school Maths sessions free.

Not sure that makes it any more fair, really, as most kids can't stay or they'd miss the one bus home.

My daughter’s school are charging £2 a session. She’s doing 15 over five days. They are free for students who are pupil premium or free school meals.

Lots of schools used to pay supply rates for this - where I taught in the UK did so.

Because the local 6th form college was constantly touting for teachers to do paid gigs running revision sessions for their re-takers - often those who'd failed when at our school - so school decided they'd rather up our results by paying staff to work with our current students instead. School sucked up the cost rather than charging students, though.

I did a few. About £120 for a day's teaching iirc. It would cost me half of that for childcare, & another day of my holiday to plan & prepare, so hardly a massive money spinner! Where possible I left it to the skint, childfree NQTs.

I now do revision sessions gladly for free, as am at a private school overseas, much better paid & lower workload.

I suspect charging will become much more common in the UK given a) state of school budgets & b) teacher retention crisis - teachers can no longer be leant on quite so easily to give their time for free, & goodwill has been massively eroded.

DH gets paid to teach is revision sessions - less than the normal rate of pay if you tried to work it out on a hourly rate.

I get paid to run revision sessions and get paid for the planning of them too. Kids pay £15 for a half day.

Any weekend or holiday revision sessions at DS' school were free. The school seemed keen to have as many students as possible turn up.

Even if schools offer free places for FSM, there will still be a lot of families that aren't entitled to those but who would never be able to afford £54 a day.

My dd has 4 revision days in the holidays, none of which has been charged .

Teachers on the main scale in state schools are paid to work 195 days, this allows for the 190 days of school plus 5 INSET days, they are not contractually obliged to work at any other time, other than what is needed to carry out tegppheir job, but they can’t be directed to do that job outside of the 195 days, hence should be paid for their time. School budgets are such that many schools don’t have the spare cash to fund these without charging parents. And it’s not just the teachers, someone will have to open up, clean, heat the school etc....

oh right so extra revision sessions are only available to those with well off parents?
Some things dont change do they/

Most schools who charge would waive it for students on FSM/ PP DullandOld - I know it's not perfect.

Schools can at least impose economies of scale - e.g.. pay a teacher to run two sessions in a day, 10 kids at each, charge a tenner & that covers paying the teacher plus the non paying students.

By comparison, a two or three hour session with a tutor would be the thick end of £50.

Unfortunately, education in the UK is massively under resourced. I agree it's shit, but if teachers are already overworked & can't be bullied into doing unpaid overtime, & schools can't afford to pay them out of the budget, then this is the situation you have.

There is an issue with staff being paid for this and no children turning up - they sign up in advance but as it's free if they can't be bothered they just don't go.

All the after school extra help offered is teacher good will though they shouldn't really need to be in in the holidays as well.

We need to scrap these holiday revision sessions put on by schools. It’s getting bloody ridiculous, and kids are getting less and less study leave so they end up with no idea of how to learn anything without having their hands held at all.

Lots of pressure put on staff to put on (unpaid) revision classes in term time too.

I think teachers should be laid a day supply for every revision day they provide in the holidays.

I know this will disadvantage some and think that needs to be overcome by charging enlightenment to cover those who can't pay.
I say that as someone on a low income. Who would apply through EHCP for personal budget to cover it!

The reason I believe this is because the system should be so that when children study during school days there's enough time to allow them to cover the curriculum and skills needed and time for recapping.

They need to stop all this "raising standards" when in fact in most cases it's increasing a teachers workload above their contracted time when there's a pay freeze and has been for years.

They still treat teaching like a vocation - except now it requires a degree and the same level of dedication/hours as private sector managers. And the "13 weeks holiday" are in fact about 5/6 in realistic times when you take into account long and medium term plans, revision sessions and report writing etc.

If teachers felt valued and renumicated for the amount of work they did there may not be such a retention issue.

I don't mean stop raising standards obviously!

I mean stop dressing up what they are doing by calling it raising standards.

It's not. It's increased spoon feeding!

I do them for a range of schools as a ‘3rd party’. I charge £350 per 10 hour day. This includes all resources. I’ve taught 6 of these for 3 different schools so far this year. One school didn’t charge their pupils. The others charged them £20 per session.

I agree these revision sessions aren't a good thing!

But parents seem to like them & demand them.

I've made myself unavailable to do any this week after running two a fortnight ago, & am getting half a dozen twitchy emails a day from y11s wailing that they don't know what to revise...

There'd be a lot to be said, IMO, for ending the whole revision session culture & raising our expectations of students to spend their holidays working independently; but I don't see much parental support for that mindset.

I wonder why it's for year 12 when they don't have external exams in year 12?

DD1 sat her GCSE's last year and what really struck me was that her school only started introducing revision techniques in year 11.
It's a real bug bear of mine because I believe that each student learns, retains and recalls information using different techniques. So surely the best approach would be to introduce different methods earlier in their education, perhaps as early as yr7, so the kids can experiment wih different methods to find those that suit them best with the aim of entering yr11 with the tools to manage their own revision (obviously with the caveat that there will still be some yr11 kids needing extra support)

Dd went on a study weekend and it didn't cost me anything.

£54 for a days high quality revision seems quite reasonable. A lot cheaper than a private tutor.