Question/ quick survey

[Piggywaspushed]

Mumsnet is always the source of finding such stuff out, so this week's query...

How many of your schools have a staff wellbeing policy? (whether applied or not!)

Is there anything your school does actively to address or support the wellbeing of staff? How does your school know how staff feel?

I see from MN that there are so many miserable teachers trudging on/ powering through, or giving up . Lots of lip service paid to wellbeing but very little action from SLT/ government .

The school I am a governor at has an excellent policy to be fair. And very supportive governors who looked at the impact of the wording and policies very carefully .

Not the case in the school I work at.

Scales
We have an inset day dedicated to workload but it's all lip service because the Agenda and outcomes are decided before it starts. Obviously we're not meant to realise this...

A thought: maybe the scales are for weighing the marking. if it weighs more than you do, you don'[t have to do it??

sadly not, maybe I'll suggest it!

Our school is working on this and it has definitely had an impact but there is still further to go. It’s primary.
Marking policy was significantly changed to directly improve work life balance. Including feedback to be given in class (and being allowed to be doing it on a walk around!) and minimal written feedback (no 2 stars and a wish at all or writing you have met lo Just for the sake of it).
They have adapted planning format to try and improve though that has slipped somewhat this year (with far more being expected than initially).
Let us be creative with class time when workload pressures are at the largest (reports/assessments) so chn can do crafty things with tas or something similar to release a little extra time.
Hiring tas and apprentice tas and having some of their hours out of kids school time so that we aren’t doing photocopying/displays/sticking work in. This is one that has the biggest impact to me personally.
Some other stuff too including reviewing what we do as a whole school staff - not just slt and people are getting better at voicing true opinions knowing it’s not going to come back to bite them!

My friends school is planning on transferring up on July 1st instead of September . So year 3 teacher gets the year 2 pupils on July 1st instead of September etc . Sounds like no wellbeing for staff or pupils

Waves right back!

Reducing the amount of mock exams insisted on throughout the year would help my well-being a lot.

Remus a genuine why about mock exams? Are you posting about year 10 and 11? Are you doing the new specifications? As a parent I am so glad my Ds was given a second chance at mocks but if you are having to write imaginary exam papers for 1-9 I totally understand.

Mocks = marking and data entry. Huge workload generators.

I think I disagree Noble. Mocks involve no teaching, they generate marking but so does teaching. Data entry is not difficult, no more than it used to be writing it in your mark book.

Teaching doesn’t generate three 1.5 hour papers in a week, each paper taking hours to mark, and we have to enter every single mark for every single question on every paper onto a spreadsheet so that students can see where their weaknesses are.

A full set of English mocks generates days of marking, plus entering the data for every student for every question, and there are now four papers. It is terrifyingly time consuming, and we're still planning lessons for all classes (including those doing the mocks, who still have lessons in between as well).

"Mocks involve no teaching" certainly isn't true in our school, and it takes substantially longer to enter data into various complicated spreadsheets than it ever did to copy numbers down in a mark book.

We have a policy but then other policies contradict it!

What do you even mean by mocks involve no teaching ? I am really confused by that.

My school is not one of those crazy schools with more than one set of exams per year in year 10/11, but every half term we have an assessment ( we use dot also be required to do a mid term assessment!). We start in year 9 so it is the main body of our teaching. We also don't mark our own class in year 11 which increases the bureaucracy and burden.

Mocks generate a huge amount of marking and this term we have year 10 and year 12 to do , plus year 9 assessments.

Do you have some vision that because there are mocks we are all off timetable, elephant ? Because teaching continues as normal!

And let's not forget report writing. I've just done over 80 written reports , which had two parts to them. One of my colleagues calculated that the reports he wrote in under a fortnight last year amounted to 13,000 words : longer than his dissertation!

I know this is not new in teaching, but the marking has definitely increased, I'd say tenfold, since even five or six years ago.

Possibly outing but we have 18 assessments per year for core subjects and 12 for non core- so for me 3 assessments per half term! 😯

Plus, don't get me started on the stupidity of not marking your own class's mock papers which then means any decent teacher feels the need to read exam papers they haven't marked to know more than joust a number about how their classes did.

Oh I see! I must admit I give the papers back to the students and ask them to check my adding up and only enter 'whole' numbers onto spread shits. I guess I get the shit end of the stick when we are continually asked for data when my subject, D&T was until this year 60% coursework, trying to forecast whether a student has enough tenacity to see it through is as easy as polishing the said stick. I am sorry to have meandered this thread.

spread shit

Hit the nail on the head there elephant !

I can't take the credit for 'spread shit' it was another Mnetter, possibly Dad dad dad.

and yet... and yet... many (ignored) educationalists will tell you overly frequent data gathering producing too much anomalous data and means nothing.

I have just had to renegotiate the predicted grade (because we are mere teachers we are not allowed to work them out ourselves) for 20 year 10 students because what data suggested they would achieve was nonsense. This took me 3 lengthy emails. Someone needs to start calculating costs of this time, as Dix does in his book on dealing with a behaviour incident.

They try at my school but it tends to be focused on staff trips/socials (nice if you are in the demographic they are aiming at) and food in the staff room (often last minute and if you are one of the busy people you really can’t down tools to make it up there). I appreciate that it is done with the right intent though.
On the whole our governors are pretty horrendous to be honest. They have a shocking ‘them and us’ attitude that even stretches to excluding staff governors from key decision making. The chair is a nice guy and his heart’s in the right place but the vast gulf of misunderstanding of what our jobs entail always wipes out the kind things he does or says because you end up so desperately frustrated!
I hate feeling so negative about this aspect of our school because I genuinely love my job, I work bloody hard but I like my work and I think the school is a good school.

Wellbeing has been top of the agenda at my school this year. Several ideas all limited by budget - not the fault of the school, SLT trying to do their best.

Fortnightly "coffee morning" at break time, those on duty get brought a hot drink.

Wellbeing week each term when there are no after school meetings at all.

Wellbeing buddy - for those staff that wanted to take part. Encouraged to do something nice for them during that week - maybe buy a gift, do a duty, swap car parking spaces so they are nearer the building, something thoughtful but not costly.

Wellbeing is monitored via an annual survey.

Surprise package of a few sweets / chocolates on birthdays - not expensive but nice gesture.

The head has also asked all staff what changes could we make to work load / what can we get rid of? Makes us feel that we have a voice and are listened to.

Staff hero - anyone can nominate as many people as they like for whatever reason, cards displayed on a board and announced in briefing.

Scales. That’s the opposite of crossiants!

Love this @noble.

From now on, I decree we should use the Croissant Scale for judging wellbeing. Croissants are a 5. Giving everyone an extra free period would be a 10. Scales are a 0.

Back to the point though, my school seems to completely misunderstand the difference between ‘wellbeing’ and ‘socialising’. Rounders games and meals out are lovely, but they don’t reduce my mark load, allow me to spend more time with my family, or reduce pressure for data, data and more data.

My friends school is planning on transferring up on July 1st instead of September . So year 3 teacher gets the year 2 pupils on July 1st instead of September etc . Sounds like no wellbeing for staff or pupils

@candlesandlight what will happen to Y6?

Now ilove this sounds more like it! Large school? Small school?

Piggy - it is a large high school (years 9 to 13), about 90 teachers and about 40 support staff. It isn't all perfect but it is clear that SLT work hard, staff work hard too and everyone understands the need for wellbeing and support.