Parents confused by inset days.

[rollonthesummer]

Really?!

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-27036066

link

Wouldn't bother me. Maybe they'd see how much time we wasted on self review.

I don't think the netmums person helps there.
INSET DAYS WERE TAKEN OFF TEACHERS HOLIDAYS. THEY ARE NOT TAKEN OFF KIDS' LEARNING DAYS.

I just want to type that on every single Internet discussion everywhere until people get it.
(Not saying this thread needed it but anyway)

Easy enough, put the brief and any powerpoints on the school VLE.
Of course parents are confused, they think teaching is a piece of piss and don't see the need for the inconvenience of INSET. Look at the regular threads on it here.

oh indeed goblinchild. i was amused to discover on one thread today that i work only 19 hours a week ('according to the nut' as that poster claimed )

I think parents think training days should take place during school holidays, rather than being tagged on to one end of a half term.

I know of one (very vocal) dad at my DCs school who is convinced teachers go shopping on training days.

So, yes parents obviously are confused by training days.

As a parent, I would be interested to know what training teachers are having, but I am so nosey I also want to know what training they are having if my DC have a supply teacher

Don't take MrsB to heart, she seems to despise teachers and her children aren't even in school yet. I'm looking forward to some cracking threads in a few years.

Lynette - training days already take place in the holidays. The 5 days were taken off the teachers' holidays and re- allocated as working days. The number of days the children have off has not changed.

I think parents think training days should take place during school holidays, rather than being tagged on to one end of a half term.

I hope that's sarcastic?!

Our most recent training day was about Internet safety and how to ensure children understand the risks involved in leading a virtual online existence; that was in the morning. The afternoon session was how to teach children to write coding for computer programming. Believe me, I would have far rather been shopping, as the morning session was quite harrowing and the afternoon was baffling!

Most of our INSETs are spent updating us all on changes the government have made to the curriculum with no discernible benefit to the children.

Littlefish & rollon - I know that, but I was saying it as parents see things. I didn't phrase it very well.

Lynette at my dcs school the teachers do go shopping on at least one of the inset days. The school always has an inset day in early December, not tacked onto the holiday or anything. When my ds was in year 7 I took that day off work and took him to the local town centre to do his Christmas shopping. We bumped into several of his teachers, and ended up in a queue in one shop behind his form teacher who told me that the teachers "had" to use the inset day for Christmas shopping because they didn't break up until the 19th December which would be "too late to do the shopping".

As someone who has to do Christmas shopping at weekends because I finish work every year at 5pm on Christmas Eve, I was

We then drove home past the school, at about 2pm, which had 3 cars in the car park.

Ruddy, it is almost certain that the teachers had so- called twilight inset sessions where they stayed several evenings until 6-7pm for training in order to allow a day off. It is a fairly accepted practice these days and one that really helps teachers to get through the hell of December with their sanity intact!

That teacher really didn't help the cause with her comment to you though!

I've done loads of twilights but never got a day off in lieu. :o

Ruddyduck - one of my schools did this. We had an 'inset' day around Christmas time that teacher had off. We earned it by doing 4 twilight sessions (training 3.30-7) after school hours to make up the inset time iyswim.

Worked well but when you added up the hours we ended up doing more hours training doing the twlights rather than just one inset day.

We do two twilight sessions to enable us to take an inset day 'off'. Four seems ridiculous!

Maybe I should count my inset days.

I actually think I hate twilights more than Insets.

Ruddy, I've honestly never heard of that one in 15 years teaching! we do occasionally disaggregate an INSET day, but definitely not for our convenience.

The last one I can recall was because we'd all otherwise have had to come in on the first Monday of the hols. Many of us would have preferred this, but it wasn't allowed - can't remember why - so we did 5 separate twilight sessions instead. It was ghastly.

Our HT is a stickler for us not being seen to gallivant - he insisted that non-striking colleagues didn't go for a pub lunch last strike day, & having agreed to my department being off-timetable for a day for essential controlled assessment moderation, he made us book a conference room at an out of town hotel rather than just all meeting at one of our houses.

But I've absolutely never come across INSET being used for shopping, even if the time was made up in twilight. Tbh I'd be mightily pissed off if my own dc's school did it!

The schools are not shut for an extra inset day on top of the five inset days though!