Can I take leave to watch my own child's nativity?

[wreckedteacher]

As the title says, can I ask for time off to watch my own children's nativities? I have to spend hours on end rehearsing my class to present their Xmas show to their parents; can I watch my own?

I am a teacher, not a governor/trustee. I am not dismissive of teachers.

And I said that about cognitive development because I think it is true.

If not how can you reliably make informed decisions about children’s learning?

OK, I'm going to throw the cat amongst the pigeons with this one, but here goes.....

I think part of the problem with schools comes from the fact that, until very recently, they were very largely staffed by people who'd spent their entire working lives in schools. There are working practices in schools that are pretty unique and utterly bonkers.

Let's take HR/employment practices. Teachers are employed on a weird annualised time budget known as 'directed time'. It's lunacy. Everyone knows that a full time teacher cannot possibly get their job done in those allocated hours. It's just always been 'accepted' that the hours are way longer and probably in breach of all sorts of laws on working time and H&S. No wonder teachers burn out at such a high rate. It's not like the wages are comparable with, say, investment banking where crippling hours go hand in hand with seven figure bonuses.

Then there's the ridiculous resignation dates. What sense is there in them?

Then there's the ridiculous 'performance related pay' which seems to take all the aspects of public sector pay policy that don't work and combines them with all the aspects of private sector pay policy that don't work.

Management is a joke. Middle leaders in a secondary school are given, at best, an hour or so a week to do all their management tasks. Well, if that's how seriously school leaders take the concept of 'management' it's no wonder it's so shockingly poor in many departments. What actual 'management training' do school managers get? DH had two three-day residential training courses on management when he was a deputy manager in a Currys earning £14,000 a year. I'd bed that's more than most school middle leaders get in their entire careers.

I bloody well hate the 'only educationalists understand schools' attitude. It's no wonder schools are such f*cked up workplaces. Why is it acceptable that someone who works in marketing for, say, an oil company can be considered able to move seamlessly into a marketing role for a bank whereas no one from outside education is considered 'worthy' of a role in a school?

I think it's about time more non-educationalists were recruited into schools. I think most parents who work outside education would be utterly gobsmacked if they knew just what working life was like for employees in the average state school that they entrust their children's education to.

”I was just trying to explain why teachers get exasperated by people who have no experience teaching appraising them and telling them what to do.”

This whole debate started because someone earlier in the thread said the fact that people like me who are not teachers being directors of MATs is “the problem”.

And then you seemed to think having detailed knowledge of cognitive development of children is crucial for making effective decisions in my role, showing a fundamental misunderstanding of what is involved and what skills are needed.

I don’t “tell teachers what to do”. Their leadership team does that. I take all the stuff I mentioned earlier off the plates of those without experience in it as far as I can, do that they can concentrate on development of teaching and learning.

There is definitely not a queue of teachers desperate to have to worry about negotiating leases or purchasing large quantities of chairs, or appointing accountants. They and I would all rather they did their thing and I do mine.

You said you made ‘education better’ I think that’s what had me thinking your role was more influential.

teachers get exasperated by people who have no experience teaching appraising them and telling them what to do.

But, why do they? DH has a new boss who has just done his appraisal. Not only is he new to the company, he is also new to the sector.

So why wasn't DH 'exasperated'? The answer is that, as in all good private sector appraisals, the meeting was a two-way process. DH's performance and new objectives were discussed, along with time allocation and realistic deadlines were agreed. This is totally unlike management in teaching which is all too often very directive and consists of 'you must do all of this and all of that and all of this to this standard and by this deadline and with a smiley face or else'.

Too many school leaders are stuck in teacher mode and treat their employees like misbehaving 11 year-olds.

That it what’s my appraisal was like too fwiw, ie a 2 way process.
I’m talking about the ofsted inspector with no teaching background asking a teacher in a special school for children with mental health problems about their phonics.
I’m talking about the current SATs access (ha ha) arrangements that don’t allow any resources to be used in maths exams, like number squares, for children with specific difficulties unable to memorise tables. In a world where the norm is to carry a computer in your pocket.

”You said you made ‘education better’”

No i didn’t. I said “I should really just carry on doing what I’m doing to make education better ”, which as I described, is a load of stuff which teachers don’t want to do anyway and quite frankly haven’t got the skills to do well either. People like me taking all that stuff off the plates of teaching professionals enables them to concentrate on what they want to do and are good at, ie developing teaching and learning. Which improves education.

If you’re a teacher and have such a severely lacking understanding of what an unpaid academy director does that’s really worrying tbh. I’m perfectly happy being questioned about my role and what I do. I am utterly fed up with people making lazy assumptions based on headlines of incompetence, and in the process displaying quite staggering ignorance.

Why is it worrying that I don’t know what you do? You said yourself you do stuff teachers don’t need to know about. Plus I don’t even work in an academy.

I was talking about people who don’t know about teaching telling teachers what to do. I’ve personally dealt with reports written by people who simply do not know what they are talking about. It’s embarrassing. Surely you must at least recognise this happens?

You’ve explained since that’s not your role; you do leases etc. Nothing to do with children’s learning or provision. I get it. No need to be so offended I’m sure you’re great at your job and very generous of you to share your skills...ok?

”Why is it worrying that I don’t know what you do? You said yourself you do stuff teachers don’t need to know about. Plus I don’t even work in an academy.”

That’s just my opinion. I think anyone in any industry should have a vague idea of what people running the organisations they work in are responsible for, and what they do or don’t get involved in. Especially if they are going to be so vocally critical on the basis of completely false assumptions and lazy stereotypes. Anyone’s argument about anything is automatically more credible if they don’t sound ignorant.

”I’ve personally dealt with reports written by people who simply do not know what they are talking about. It’s embarrassing. Surely you must at least recognise this happens?”

Again, not in our MAT by any of our directors. And if you don’t even work in an academy anyway, the people you are talking about are presumably not volunteer academy directors either? So why are you assuming that because you personally have come across people doing a completely different job badly with a lack of appropriate knowledge, that means that people in a completely different role must be equally incompetent and must be doing things which involve telling teachers what to do? It’s just bizarre.

I don’t mind people criticising the principle of academisation at all. I don’t mind people criticising those in government who make decisions about curriculum etc. I don’t mind people criticising the behaviour of those who make decisions in their own schools. I don’t mind people who actually have the tiniest clue what I do criticising how I do it. All fine. But this whole “academies are all bad and corrupt” and lumping committed volunteers from other industries doing their best to make things better in with government ministers and similar just does teachers no favours whatsoever, and it gets very very wearing.

Informed, intelligent and critical debate about how education is run in this country is vital. But people like me having to argue against a wall of negative ill-informed stereotypes doesn’t help.

Flowery, I have tried to offer an olive branch and I don’t wish to argue further.

Just answering the questions you asked me.

Why teachers would want to be unpaid trustees is beyond me when so many complain about their workload as it is.

Also, in most sectors of industry board members are drawn from a wide field in order to provide a diversity of experience, viewpoints and values. They are generally paid very handsomely for a few meetings per year because that is what they are worth.

Charity trustees do a similar role, and far far more, for free.

”Why teachers would want to be unpaid trustees is beyond me when so many complain about their workload as it is.”

I don’t think they do want to be trustees though. They just don’t like other people doing it, it would seem. Or some of them don’t anyway!

Personally I wouldn’t be a teacher if you paid me triple what they get paid, and I admire them hugely a lot of the time. I hope most of the ones I meet and talk to think I’m supportive rather than lumping me in with Michael Gove, and are reasonably informed about why our board of directors is there and what it does. But perhaps I’m deluding myself!

It would probably be beneficial for school staff and trustees to observe what they all do. For example, trustees shadowing classes to get a tangible sense of school routines, and staff sitting in on parts of meetings.

It add to time pressures of all those involved, though.

But having confirmation that everyone is on the same side can only be a good thing.

Depends on your school.

Two out of my three hour of my Headteacher’s would allow it wherever possible. And at my current school it’s almost always arranged as the HT really promotes it and the rest of the staff will always help to accommodate it by covering for one another etc. I missed very few of dd’s class assemblies, shows and special events.

Why are there people working 5-10 hours per week unpaid doing jobs running schools? Doesn't that seem like a really weird arrangement? Why aren't people being paid to do this sort of high-level stuff?

”Why are there people working 5-10 hours per week unpaid doing jobs running schools? Doesn't that seem like a really weird arrangement? Why aren't people being paid to do this sort of high-level stuff?”

Yes it’s very weird. To be fair, there are some weeks it’s only a couple of hours, and it obviously drops off in school holiday time.

But that’s the way schools have to be these days. They desperately need daft people like me willing to do this stuff for free. I enjoy it most of the time, fortunately.

Do they though? Prior to academies, local authorities took care of running schools and seemed to manage ok.
And time spent on tendering, writing bids, poring over legislation etc was time spent on teaching and learning.

Yes they do, because the government has said so! Whether you, I or anyone else thinks that was the right decision is irrelevant really. That’s the way it is. We all have to do the best we can within the system we have.

We don't. We can fight against it. And we were.
This govt has made a huge mess of education - I think we can both agree on that.

What makes you think local government employees were good at running schools?

Well I can’t see any government present or future taking all the academies back under LA control now, so I’ll carry on doing my best under the current system I think.

Two of my DCs attend a Secondary school that has now teetering on the balance been taken from academy back to LA

The thing is, the schools that were doing fine under LA control - the 'converter' academies who were allowed to go standalone because they were Good / Outstanding - are mostly also doing fine as converter academies as well, because they were good schools with good management and usually middling or better intakes so no specific issues.

Meanwhile the schools that were failing to thrive under LA control are often ALSO failing to thrive when passed like unwanted parcels into the control of large national MATs - because the issues that caused them to fail to thrive were not under the LA's control, and included e.g. nature of the catchment.

Of course there are exceptions to this. There are examples of schools working in partnership within smaller local MATs which are successful because sharing practice with a school just like yours can be helpful, and examples where poor LAs have been worse than the best academy chains.

However, had the same amount of money and effort been put into improving the LA provision and support to schools, and fostering partnerships between schools within and across areas, as has been put into all of academisation since the programme started, then I suspect that the outcome would be the same or better than the academisation programme.