Secondary teachers - when do you get your new class lists?

[ArtisanBaps]

We get ours the afternoon before we start teaching, so this week it was Monday afternoon and my first lessons were Tuesday afternoon.

I was lucky to get my new timetable in August, but some departments still hadn't had theirs the morning before they started teaching.

We all moan about it every year as it seems ridiculous to have to get all the relevant pupil info on SEN, KS2data and current levels read, digested and pupils organised into a suitable seating plan by the next morning!

I appreciate that, especially in year 7, there may still be a few unknowns, such as kids who don't turn up because they have gone to a different school, but the majority of pupils will have been known about for a couple of months ( we had them in school in July for transition days for goodness sake!), so why all the last minute cloak and dagger business? And we definitely know how many year 8-11 we have, because we've already 'got' them, so why can't the new class lists be generated earlier??

Does anyone else have this nonsense?

I have the lists. Fft grades ETc need to be done by it dept still although you could puzzle through tutor group lists.

Pp etc I out in over the next few weeks.

Don't expect it to be all sorted. Plus they change

I think you have a point. I've done some seating plans of classes I know. The others I've warned are temporary till it's all sorted

We got them on Wednesday and started teaching Friday but we only have 50 kids in our (sen) school. With so few classes I wanted it early in the holidays really.

I do random seating plans got the first few weeks-boy girl as far as possible.

Got mine between 2 hours and 5 minutes of the first classes and at least two kids were on each one by mistake or missing from each one. Still waiting for any class lists for sixth formers even though we´ve been back a week.

I love to plan in advance so this causes me rather a lot of stress. It makes first lesson seating plans rather crazy and also means I have no idea about SEN.

I understand that new kids join the school but for Years 8 to 11, (I teach a core subject) and Year 13, we know 80 to 100% of the kids are the same as last term and we know their ability from last term´s report. Our school has a Primary section too so we also know at least 80% of the Year 7s and have their data. It´s just that our school won´t pay the timetable guy to work over the summer(!)

Also we don´t know which groups we´re having apart from Yr. 11 who stay the same from Yr. 10. We have 6 groups in Yrs.7 to 9 and 8 in Yrs. 10 and 11 then 4 to 6 per year in sixth form. So it´s impossible to guess who you´re going to get. Often the timetable that you receive an hour or so before classes start doesn´t match with the timetable the kids have so you think you´re getting Yr. 9, Set 6, but Set 1 turns up!

Same here. Mind you my friend starts teaching new timetable straight after year 11 leave in May, so no released time. I'd rather keep that and face a couple weeks uncertainty now, at least I know to plan nothing other than school work for first few weeks of term!

I'm going to try and finish my second draft this weekend (putting SEN etc on them), but know that they will likely change in the meantime. I've already had one no-show in Yr 7.

We get ours the first week back, with Yr 7 obvs being subject to change. I knew which classes I'd be teaching before we broke up, but didn't get the timetable until late in the hols.

I don't 'do' seating plans - I let them sit where they choose and then tweak if it's not working.

I teach 7 classes this year. 5 of those I taught last year with minimal changes, so I had all the data/classlists for those before the holidays. The 2 new classes are both year 7, so I was given them on Tuesday afternoon to start teaching on Wednesday morning, and I had 3 extra children in one class that got last minute places so weren't on our system.

Good to see it's not just my school then!

I just think it could be made so much easier by providing a first draft during the holiday, say by the week before results day. Particularly if Ofsted are due any minute, you want to have everything in place as quickly as possible.

And it's only fair to potentially vulnerable new pupils with ASD or similar, that you are fully clued up before they arrive.

Even when your timetable says 8f and you've taught them last year, you are doomed without a class list as my school also likes to tweak existing forms and split up forms with bad combinations of pupils in them, so even if you get 8f again in year 9, it could be a completely new set of kids with a new dynamic to match.

Another moan to add - we teachers have been back since 20th August and kids started on 1st September (Yr. 12 on 28th Aug.) And our teachers´ planners are still not here!!

The kids´ ones are, but ours aren´t as they ordered them from a cheaper company than the kids´ ones(!)

So annoying as all my marks, SEN notes, absence stuff etc. are in my own notebook and my timetable, tutor group´s timetable, h/w timetables, duty rota, class lists, seating plans, etc. are all on sheets inside my file. I´m already narked about having to spend ages copying them across when our planners finally arrive which will no doubt be when term has gone fully crazily underway.

I take your missing planners and raise you 'no exercise books!'

I kid you not! We ordered in early July, chased during holidays and were told due in end of August but no sign when we got back to school on INSET day and we got told still out of stock, so I cancelled the order, ordered a different lot and demanded a delivery by Wednesday. We planned to survive on recycled ones for Tuesday afternoon (our assistant did a lot of recycling of books last year, so we had a small stash) as we only had 2 KS3 classes between the 2 of us in our department.

Roll on Thursday afternoon, still no books and the supply of recycled books is now gone! By this time panic sets in, we have no more books. Still another 400 KS3 pupils needing a book! We are in SM with a big focus being quality of book scrutiny this year, so we were desperate to start off right with matching bloody books, but it was not to be.

Turned out the person at YPO hadn't pressed the red urgent delivery button so they are now due Monday.

So in our department for ks3 we currently have a combination of yellow medium 8mm recycled books, some acid green A4 8mm that we nicked from another department (not sure who as my colleague scuttled in and said 'ask no questions' ) and some primary style blue 12mm ones ( which we ordered by mistake last year) and whatever my colleague managed to steal on Friday when I was on my day off!!

OMG how annoying. I bow down to your superior source of irritation.

We are desperately short of textbooks and exercise books as the management recruited way more kids than HODs had known about when making orders and the roll call is up more than 10% on last year (although budgets for departments the same? Tough on us core subjects!) We´re also therefore short on chairs and tables and space everywhere.

Ridiculous isn't it. The simple things like books, chairs, space etc make such a difference and should be so easy to sort, (being inanimate objects, unlike kids) but seem to be the hardest to get sorted !

Until this year we actually had a double classroom in our new BSF school ( luckily not in my dept). Yes, 60 kids, two white boards, side by side, feet apart. You are expected to teach a class while another teacher is teaching another class. I've tried it, it's impossible. You end up doing sign language and writing everything on the PowerPoint.

Anyway, someone (new head) has now seen sense because it's been walled off over the summer into two separate classrooms!

Thank goodness for the small mercies!

Our school has mostly been spending its time, energy and money this summer on...building a new uniform shop...in the car park (having cut down all of the trees the kids shelter under in sunny weather, which is more or less always). So now the parents of the 10% extra kids have fewer parking spaces AND the shop isn´t even ready so we have an unsafe area outside and kids can´t buy new uniforms! (This last is actually making the teachers have a bit of a LOL as the management is super hot on uniforms and now there are kids turning up in whatever they please).

A partially completed uniform shop instead of shade trees and parking. Brilliant!

Actually, that could give our place ideas for the future...we have a newly introduced uniform item this year, but the one shop that sells them has run out, so a lot of kids haven't got them, giving the rest a cast iron excuse not to wear them!

The kids have to have these little victories, it´s only fair!

I never used to seat in a plan either until OFSTED loomed as they do this year. My ks4 are going to learn the OFSTED differentiated tables plan for when they come in. Then Revert to sitting where they like.

Ks3 are on tables. I only have 3 classes of them tho :(