I spend more time with other people's kids than my own

[user71017]

That's just fundamentally wrong.

I took dd2 (3) to a party yesterday and was so upset because I didn't know a single other mum. Why? Because I've never been able to take my youngest to preschool.

Dd1 (7) had her first netball match on Friday. She was the only team member not to have mummy watching.

I know the parents of the kids in my class more than the parents of my friends kids. I see the kids in my class more than I see my own.

This is all with being part time but being screwed over with working 3.5 days over 5.

You realise that £24k as a 0.7 is £34k FTE.... then if you make that a 48 week equivalent it’s £43k.....

That’s why people are saying it is a good wage.....

Dragon Why the 48 week equivalent?

Oh yes, it's exactly like you're earning £43k and not £24k. The actual money is irrelevant.

Also, that’s not what the OP actually gets. This whataboutery isn’t helpful. Just shouting at someone ‘other people have it worse, stop whining.’ isn’t actually a helpful thing to do. Nor will it prevent the flood of teachers leaving the profession.

‘Well, chaps. It seems other people (without knowing the ins and outs of our job) think we’ve got a fairly good deal. Let’s stick around until we die of old age or drink ourselves to death.’

I'm a trainee teacher and expect I will be joining the 50% of teachers who leave the profession within 5 years, for all the reasons above. It's not just that you don't get to see your children, it's that you spend all day ,(8 till 8 is an average day, with 8 till 11 not untypical) with other people's children, who don't appreciate you and wish you would leave them alone. It's silly when you think about it.

nanny
I've had one of those data chats (I'm in a good supportive school)

Mr SLT - Maisy. Your Y11 data is under national expectations. Could you give us an overview of why? What's being done for PP pupils? Have you tracked your more able?

Me- Well Mr SLT. The thing is this is their CURRENT working level. We are in October. Their exams are in May. Of course they'll be under national expectations. We have a school year to go. We haven't completed the course yet and they've only just started revising.

Mr SLT Fair enough. Do you have any students who would benefit from extra? Let us know if you need anything or you'd like anyone to get extta intervention? Any issues just give us a shout and we'll see what we can do.

Not sure why the initial panic about being under national figures a year early was needed but at least they saw how silly it was.

You realise that £24k as a 0.7 is £34k FTE.... then if you make that a 48 week equivalent it’s £43k.....

Yeah-because we have that option to earn £43k easy peasy.

“You realise that £24k as a 0.7 is £34k FTE.... then if you make that a 48 week equivalent it’s £43k.....”

“Yeah-because we have that option to earn £43k easy peasy.”

But that ^ does sound like a fairly good deal to me!! What sounds shitty about the reality of it is all of the unpaid overtime. There’s no way a teacher should be expected to mark books / lesson plan until 8-11pm, that’s ridiculous.

Luckily for the people in my family who work in teaching they do 8-5pm.

Almost 70% of teachers on the TeacherTapp app said they work more than 10 hours per day.

Err but I don't earn £43k. Another fabulously helpful comment.

Yes, but you don’t work 9-5 48 weeks a year either. You take a lower wage because you do fewer hours. Just like everyone doing part time work does.

And before you take offence, see my earlier post about how wrong i think it is that teachers have so much unpaid overtime.

You don't earn 43k, but what is being highlighted is that if your job was a non teaching post it could be advertised as £43k pro rata 0.7 FTE term time only. I have the opportunity to work a full FTE post and also during term time so earn the full advertised wage- others who don't, would get the pro rata salary.

Why are people intent on going into thr OP's salary and continuing the 'you don't have it that bad because others earn less than you' nonsense?

She's had a job, gonr part time to have a better balance with family life but the school havr decided that she does 3.5 days over 5 so it's not had thr impact she wanted.

Because of that plus other demands she's feeling a bit rubbish and (like thousands of other teachers) is considering leaving.

And yet all some people can do, whej she's posted on Staffroom not AIBU, is nitpick and tell her yo get over it.

She's feeling rubbish. Are half these comments actually helpful for her?

Well done OP. It sounds like you've made the right choice for your situation.

You realise that £24k as a 0.7 is £34k FTE.... then if you make that a 48 week equivalent it’s £43k...

Ok, I'm going to bite with this one...

Let's take a fairly middle-of-the-road FT contracted hours of 37.5 per week. 70% of this is 26.25 hours.

Take off the 15 hours in the classroom, that leaves 11.25.

Looking at the 'average' week in our annual school calendar, an hour a week is spent in meetings/parent consultation meetings and 15 minutes is spent on statutory break duties. That leaves 10 hours.

I'm going to assume 'lazy teacher mode' and not plan any lessons from scratch. I'm going to use last year's PowerPoint and last year's worksheets and get them photocopied. I can't be arsed to refresh my knowledge of A level stuff so I'm going to wing it off the top of my head and teach it like I did last year. I've taught for 13 years and have the definition of first ionisation energy tattooed in my brain anyway so why waste time. OK, I haven't taught year 8 biology for 9 years, but who cares? I can just bluff it. We'll allow 10 minutes per lesson planning time in order that I can grab the bottles off the shelf in the prep room because I haven't bothered to order stuff in advance from the technician. That's 2.5 hours. That leaves 7.5 hours.

Teaching 7 classes means that, on average, at least one class per week is doing some sort of test or assessed task. If I get the kids to mark each others' and then just cross-check it can take 2 hours but a full-on year 13 exam may take 5 hours to mark. I've got to sit there with a calculator and try to pick up all those 'error carried forward' marks after all. Let's 'average it out' at 3 hours. That leaves 4.5 hours.

As a lazy teacher I'm going to cut every corner with respect to emails. Anything abotu CPD opportunities or 'teaching strtegies' I'm going to delete without reading. I'm only going to respond to emails from the head teacher or something I deem 'important enough'. I could cut time on that down to 2 hours a week. Sod all those emails from HOY that say 'I'm meeting with Tarquin in 7A's parents on Monday to discuss his current progress. Has his homework improved since last term?' Tarquin has 11 teachers so the HOY won't notice if one teacher doesn't respond. Same with the Annual Review for Students with Statements return forms. That leaves 2.5 hours.

Assessment/Data input deadlines cannot be missed. 7 classes means 21 reports over the year.Cutting every corner possible and just 'copying and pasting' statements from last year means I can probably spend 2.5 hours on each class report. That's a lot of corner-cutting. We'll call it 1.5 hours per week on average over the year. That leaves 1 hour.....

Notice all the things I haven't done:

I haven't marked a single exercise book. Not one. I teach 160 students.
I haven't planned a singles lesson properly. No forward reading, no allowance for new specifications, no differentiation, no real thought, no consideration for time of day or prior learning.
Intervention for under-performing students? No, none at all.
I have left every lab at the end of the lesson as an utter shit-tip. I haven't had time to deal with any broken equipment or help tidy up chemicals. That's what the technician's there for isn't it?
Follow up on any behaviour issues. So, Tarquin hasn't done his homework again? Sod the lunchtime catch-up session - I've got a copy of TES Jobs to leaf through in the staff room.

If that's how I carried out my duties as a teacher I could quite legitimately be sacked for incompetence. That's the reality of it. A competent teacher 70% can, at a minimum, complete their hours in a 37.5 hour working week.

Oh, and teachers work 39 weeks, not 38 (it's called Inset).

A full-time 'normal' worker does not work 48 weeks a year. Many employers (and I mean many) offer 25 days plus bank holidays. Remember, 6 bank holidays fall within teacher's precious 13 weeks. So, many people with 'full time' jobs work 46 weeks.

So, a FTE salary for a 0.7 M6 teacher with London fringe actually works out to be £28,300. Doesn't sound quite so attractive now, does it?

OP I'm with you. I'm contracted 0.67 for £16.5k (M4) and I also work over 5 days. Request for a job share or something else to rejig to 3 full days/2.5 days turned down. Essentially I'm contracted to work 8.50-12 Monday to Friday... HOWEVER

• Monday is staff meeting day so I stay until 5pm minimum, so at least five hours unpaid.
• there are at least two after school events a half term, ending at 7pm for parents evenings and later for nativities etc. I live over an hour away so no point in going home in between. That's at least seven hours unpaid and means I don't see DS (18 months) for a couple of days as I leave before he's awake.
• I have children in my class that I spend time worrying about, whether they're having hot meals at home, whether they're being abused, why are their clothes always dirty etc etc and that is awful
• the children I teach are 3/4 and I still get grief about targets and tracking.
• I'm PAID for half days but often have to have DS in nursery for FULL days because his half day finishes at 1pm and it's 40 minutes from my school to his nursery. If I leave at 12 every day my marking, displays, general school admin doesn't get done.

I reached the conclusion that yes, the holidays are good but actually, I'd see my child a whole lot more if I found a job three days a week NOT teaching.

I bring home £1k a month, £200 at least goes on childcare and £200 at least goes on petrol. I can take a massive pay cut, workcloser to home and feel happier with my lot. Which is why I'm handing my notice in within the next couple of weeks.

I understand where your coming from that you work & spend more time with people in your work environment than your private but what difference is there just cause your teacher, just cause they children is neither hear no there its the same for every working parent, my sister works at a care home & does shifts (morning,afternoon & nights) ridiculous hours & the over time & having to go to meetings, I'm quite sure she would rather spend more time with our mother caring for her than other peoples parents but she needs to work same for me I work in retail & believe me would much prefer to be caring for my mother or at my child's school event than in my working environment keeping a smile on my face when dealing with a difficult customer, other posters got a good point about you having term holidays off most people in my company all want term times off but unfornatly only one of us ever get it depending who gets to the office first & gets it put on the rota, there are 14 of us here & 12 of us have children type of job I'm in we also are other pen 24 /7 even Xmas & boxing day 2 of us have to be present at all times, yes it upsets me that I have to miss my children some years opening they Xmas presents on Xmas morning but its the pros over other jobs in my area make it the best choice for me & giving up work just insn't a option for me, feel your pain op working parents all feel it

Where has 43 come from? My full time wage, M6 of London fringe teaching scales is £34k.

God bless you summer

43 comes from assuming that teachers only work 38 weeks (incorrect) and that everyone else works 48 (incorrect).
So a teacher works 38/48s of a 'real' job, and your wage for that 'real' job would be 34 divided by 38/48 = £43k.

Yeah. I know.

The phrase "get a life" springs to mind at whoever worked that out but I'll keep that quiet.

Great post, SummerChild.

Most people have no idea about how teachers' pay / holidays work or about the vast quantity of stuff teachers do which is outside of contracted time but non-negotiable. Oh and of course what they really have no clue about is what it's like to handle large groups of disinterested and badly-behaved kids day-in-day-out while your salary is dependent on them giving a shit or not.

If long holidays were enough to make teaching an attractive job, there would never be any teacher shortages.

Unions are trying to gather a 5% pay rise for teachers.

Woop! I might jump up to £25,200!

Being a working parent is tough full stop, let's not try and say some have it worse than others. You miss out on lots of things and constantly feel like you are not doing a good job of anything. I am slightly skeptical that all those hours are really required, a good school SMT should not allow that much making / planning but there will inevitably be many more hours than just the contact ones.

Teaching does seem to be particularly rubbish at flexible working though. I know other work places can be too but many are getting much better. The main problem seems to be having to go in every day, meaning you never get a break. I really hope more schools wake-up to this soon or retention will only become a bigger problem

Eolian I don’t teach in England and don’t do anything like the hours many teachers mention on here. I could certainly fill them! But there doesn’t seem to be the same expectation. I still work more than my contract and find it hard to explain why it’s so exhausting - I think you have hit the nail on the head with the comment about the behaviour issues. The strain of putting on a performance all day, often to young people doing the modern day equivalent of throwing tomatoes at you, is worse for me than the hours.