Working at weekends

[avenueq]

Would you say a full time teacher can do his/her job properly without working at weekends?
A colleague thinks it means you're cutting corners.

Depends what you do during the week. If I work well after school and a few weekday evenings I get weekends work for. If I slack off midweek then it's weekend working for me!

You can’t generalise like that. Some people work really hard during the week so they don’t have to work on weekends. If you’ve taught the same content a lot of times before that cuts down the workload. If your subject is light on marking that helps.

I think teachers divide their workload into what suits them. You can not make any generalisations.

It depends on how much they get done during the week surely? It also depends on subject, key stage etc. In secondary someone who teaches just one key stage can probably keep weekends sacrosanct more easily than someone teaching all 3. I don’t think routinely working at weekends is necessary for anyone but if you have year 11 and Sixth Form mock exams to mark all at once then there are probably some occasions when you need to do some marking at the weekend to meet the deadlines. I don’t routinely work at weekends but do the odd Saturday morning intervention and occasionally mark mock papers on a Sunday. Most of the time I only work weekdays, arriving 7:30-8am and leaving between 5 and 6pm.

I know this is not helpful,but here in Ireland no teacher I know does work at the weekend religiously. They might do an hour of prep or sorting emails etc on a Sunday. But we also leave by half 3 every day and don’t take marking home either.i think the uk workload is horrendous, somethingnerds to be done!!

I and Something needs

Everyone I know in primary who is marking and planning as required is working at the weekend. Not so sure about the headteachers ...

I think 'front line' teachers have a much larger weekend/evening workload than SLT. I also think the school you work in makes a huge difference to workload. I'm Head of department (of a key subject) but worked soooo hard in my earlier years of teaching that my workload is less now as I reuse lots of resources that I spent hours creating years ago. I rarely work evenings or weekends unless ofsted are in, or there is an impending lesson observation. I left a school where I was earning big bucks, but literally had no life (working 15 hours a day, 6 days a week easily) to a school where I'm in a lesser position, but I'm in school for 8.30 and leave by 4 most days.

I work at home Monday to Thursday from 7 ish until 11 ish. As soon as 4pm on a Friday comes around I don’t do anything until Monday morning. Works for me.

I never work weekends unless its data in, reports time etc and id say the same applies to most of my colleagues. However I am often in school until 6pm so i dont have to take stuff home

Primary teacher here, in my 30th year of teaching. Never work weekends- or evenings for that matter.

This time of year, II work weekends, evenings and in school but try to have a break. I can't keep up if I don't put in the hours. Most English teachers with exam classes are the same. Recently, in the staff room, RE teachers marking Y11 mocks were making classes of ten. Maths teachers can whizz through a set of papers. So, a lot depends on the subject.

Whole class feedback, re-using resources etc are timesavers but large classes and marking are the killers for me.

I never work after 5pm. I then do between none at all to 1.5hrs on a weekend. I work through breaks and lunch times and get to school by 7.30am. Our school give us 20% ppa too.

@Cynderella you really need to look at a whole school minimal marking policy. We've introduced one into our school and the difference its made is great x

@MrsP we're looking at reducing marking in the department and I'm trying to use whole class feedback more. How does your policy work for English, especially Y9 and above?

I'm Head of English so had a lot of input into the creation of the policy. Our emphasis is on giving verbal feedback within lessons to address areas for development (whether individually or to the whole class) and I would expect to see lessons being taught that link to the errors the majority are making. We have completely moved away from giving feedback for the sake of it and are focusing on the quality of T&L. Most staff mark 3 books per class twice a half term: the top, middle and bottom book. If the same errors crop up, then a lesson would need to be taught linked to that skill. We are a high archiving school despite having 32% pp students. We continue to mark all assessment pieces.

That's interesting. I try to flick through books and feedback on what I find but, ironically, I don't have time for that if I'm marking stuff they did a couple of weeks ago! This time of year, I just don't have time for marking books.

I don't work weekends anymore. I also don't work on the UK anymore, though. :)

As a head teacher I work 5 12 hour days and at least 6 hours every Saturday.

I don't think you can generalize, depends on many things such as number and size of classes, the subject, changes in the subject, needs of whoever is being taught. Another factor would be how organised the teacher is - some people set things out very organised, entirely focused. Others may prefer to do a bit, have a coffee, do some more in a more relaxed fashion. Neither is wrong, just different.