NQT year "outstanding primary" should I expect to work 13hr days?

[SarfEast1cated]

Hi everyone, please advise! I went to meet the teacher I'm replacing in September today, and she said that in the Autumn term she was working from 7am to 8pm each day and 4hrs on Saturday. Does that seem right to you? If I worked those hours I would never see my DD who's 9 and goes to bed at 8.30. I'm panicking a bit now, do you think current teacher is exaggerating? In my PGCE placement school I was working 7am - 5.45 and I thought that was OK...

The statements in this tread are ridiculous. OP don't worry - your Induction year will be hard but don't make yourself a martyr for your job. These ultra long hours are unnecessary. I get to work
at 8:30 leave before 5 and I don't work at home. Ever. I do work through lunch and I mark during lessons. Make use of self/peer marking too. It takes some training but the children find it very useful.

Firstly acknowledge that you will never ever finish all the tasks you need to as a teacher. There's always something extra you could do. Prioritise the important stuff.

Don't reinvent the wheel. There is no need to make power points etc. There's thousands on TES and twinkl. Join the Facebook groups specific to your keystage and get tips and resources from there.

Buy On Target Maths - it's amazing and will save hours planning maths.

Good luck.

You will be working every evening and some of the weekend for your entire career. Plus some of your holidays. Stupid hours when you're a teacher
Utter rubbish.
I am in secondary, core subject , but don't work anything like this - clearly this person is working inefficiently.

MrsGuy, my comment was similar to that which you're responding too so I feel the need to say that I was not working inefficiently or being a martyr. I worked those hours to get done what was required of me by SLT. In other schools, I have not worked as many hours so it very much depends on the school.

Exactly Scarlett

mrsguy it's hard to work efficiently when the governernment and exam boards change things so often. Creating different resources for students with different needs also takes a while; I had a lot of classes with EAL and other additional needs. I worked in 2 departments and was subject leader of one of them; I had a heavy workload.

On top of that: reports, analyzing data, recording interventions, writing schemes for new GCSE, planning trips, sooo much marking.

I think it sounds about "right" , obviously it is not right - but typical.

I work in a secondary and have been at it for a long time and so can use shortcuts. I work easily 12 hours a day during the week.

I just completed my NQT year and I certainly didn't work 13 hour days! I was in school from 7.45-5pm (when school shut) and it was very rare that I did work at home, maybe one night a week? I never spent more than one day of the weekend planning, and I could have condensed that down into a half day if I'd needed to. In the holidays, I worked either the whole last day or dipped in and out over the week as I felt like it.

I've found that teachers who are too "on it" just find things to do. My year partner has been teaching many years and always worked many, many more hours than I do (even though several times I caught them recycling old planning and claiming they'd just made it themselves). I have absolutely no idea what they do with all that time. Whatever it was wasn't important, because our results were largely the same and my observation feedback was always really good.

I'm going to find not having NQT time a shock this year, and I'm moving to a school that I suspect will have higher expectations. But either way, you dont HAVE to dedicate your life to school.

I do work through lunch and I mark during lessons.

I run a club at lunchtimes, and am expected to teach not mark during lessons ... ticks in Maths books for children I've been working with, fine, but if I were to be found marking books rather than working with children during a lesson, that wouldn't be acceptable.

For those of us with children, working at home is a choice that we make: would I rather pick my child up rather earlier, take then to clubs / activities and then mark when they're in bed, or stay in school and keep them in longer hours childcare? I don't know many teacher parents in primary who do the longer hours of childcare...

cantkeepawayforever I could (I guess) do the same, but then I wouldn't be able to get home in time to get DD from school, even if I left at 3.15, so would end up paying for ASC anyway.
teacher1990 how much marking were you expected to do? My new school has quite an involved system and every book is marked before it is used again, so English and Maths every day, topic and science every week. I really don't want to martyr myself to this job, but I want to do it well iyswim...

I don't mean that I ever collected them straight from school! However, picking them up from after school club at 4.30 / 5, after an hour / an hour and a half of on-site childcare, makes a lot of difference compared with using a childminder for a 6pm or 6.30 pickup, which is what I would need if I did all my work at school, IYSWIM?

Yes I see what you mean cantkeepawayforever. I'll try to give that a go, I'm just not at my most alert after DD has gone to bed!

Another one who doesn't take work home. Occasionally will do some marking on a Sunday but it's rare. And all my holidays are holidays. I am not a perfectionist but I am an outstanding teacher.

Wow @heron98 I am genuinely in awe and would love to be like that. What do you teach? How often do you mark? How have you planned new schemes of work for the new specifications?