Thirteenth Republic - School’s out for summer, no more pencils no more books!

[StaffAssociationRepresentative]

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I use the hp instant ink. Over lockdown, to print all the dc's work/worksheets, I ended up going up to the business plan at £17.99 a month for 700 pages for a couple of months.

Some of that was normal household printing but not a huge amount. Around 100 pages.

Normally we pay £3.49/100 pages and it's £1 for every 15 pages over. I got up to a £12.99 bill before I realised and switched to the larger plan. Even as a rainbow leader I only paid £7.99 a month for 300 pages personal and unit use (25 girls in my section plus admin paperwork).

At our secondary school I'm not sure how it works but I think from what one of the students said, their parents put money on their biometrics system for printing as one student couldn't print because they couldn't pay for it. I haven't been set up on biometrics yet and haven't had cause to print yet so will have to find out.

@piggywaspushed - A significant number of parents from primary and secondary have asked for hard copy due to multiple siblings/lack of resources at home.

I'm lucky that we have the tech now and can pay for paper and ink but I did help a friend out with printing stuff off for her kids right at the start of lockdown - our school sent a link for a workbook for each class.

Lots of teachers buy resources because it helps support delivery/behaviour/motivation. I think I spend about 50-100 pounds a year.

I don’t think parents understand why and some just assume that all the pretty nice stuff comes out of the school budget.

maybe just me, then. I didn't set anything for the whole of lockdown that needed printing. But then my school isn't one of those schools that expects kids to really do any of their own. Probably why we blow our copying budget by October!!

We didn't set a anything much which needed printing, but some kids (most?) prefer to handwrite than type - and, tbh, as a parent, I'd rather they mixed up screen time and non-screen time.

40% of our families asked for printed packs because they didn't have tech (or not enough access to tech per child). That plus postage costs has cost school thousands.

I think there's a slight assumption from some that a home pc and printer is standard. But with modern technology, even in deprived areas, many families are much more likely to have a smart phone and use that to access the internet.

Ime it tends to be those who have gone on to further education who have a home computer/laptop and printer while those who didn't haven't had the need for it. This is looking at my friendship and acquaintance group so by no means a large number of people. But we are considered a deprived area.

I think it depends on how you did your online learning. Because we did the sodding/sainted live lessons there was nothing to print really. We didn't have worksheets that couldn't be done on Google Classroom and didn't seem to encounter the desire for workpacks or printed resources. That would have been a nightmare because we just don't have that sort of thing at my school in the subjects I know of at least, although I am sure something could have been rustled up.

The survey did talk about people wanting things delivered and I did wonder whether there was maybe a slight sense of entitlement/teachers don't have anything better to do behind it. but that may be moths worth of MN induced paranoia!

DS’s school sent him some subject-specific paper. I was quite surprised they didn’t ask if anyone needed it (he didn’t as already have some). If that was replicated across the school then the postage alone would have added up to a fair bit. I suppose it was to head off the inevitable “but I didn’t have any squared paper!” from some pupils, or to avoid embarrassing anyone by making them ask for basics.

I offered to deliver learning packs from my own school but there were so few needed that one teacher who lives very locally did it in one go.

30k! Nothing to reward those who started on 18 and are still around I take it? Just lots of money thrown at newbies and fingers in your ears about retention being the crux of the matter as usual.

Not allowed to say it's a kick in the teeth remember honey

30k is only 5k off of the top of mps scale! Is it just me that finds it insulting that all of mps isn’t going up by a good few grand at each point if they’re going to give totally new teachers that much?

@Piggywaspushed

Not allowed to say it's a kick in the teeth remember honey

Not allowed to say much apparently but yeah my teeth feel pretty kicked by that. 70% timetable and one of us having to mentor you for free and you’re on nearly as much money as someone with a decade or more experience! That smarts.

Teaching as a chew-em-up-spit-em-out sausage factory for the young and idealistic?

@TheHoneyBadger

30k! Nothing to reward those who started on 18 and are still around I take it? Just lots of money thrown at newbies and fingers in your ears about retention being the crux of the matter as usual.

I think I started on £14k in 1998

I’m going to share my weird observation. I have tended to have a google page with ‘covid uk today update’ open throughout this whole thing. I just refresh it.

Up until a week or so ago all the major and some very small papers would be represented in the results. Then the guardian suddenly never appears. To get the guardian to appear I have to type it into the search term.

Months of appearing then suddenly doesn’t appear even if you click through pages of results.

That has to be deliberate doesn’t it?

The same thing happened with pay quite a few years back when they compressed the scale. I think it took me 8 years to reach the top of the MPS or whatever it was called then.

They really do think throwing money at graduates is the right approach. Whilst that may work in some subjects where they can command higher salaries direct out of uni, I have always been dubious that pay is the right way to attract the right entrants to the profession.

My DD is 7 so everything had to be printed for her (and then scanned and uploaded making every day tedious admin Groundhog Day)

DS was Y6 and was able to do much more online, typing and saving stuff in google docs. I dread to think how much paper we would have around the house now if both of them had been worksheet based!

At my school we set everything on mathswatch for KS3/4. Actually I dread to think how we’re going to have to go through cajoling them to write out their working all over again once they’re back in class doing written maths.

It certainly attracts a ‘not sure what to do with my degree and can’t afford post grad oh look you get paid to train to teach I guess I could give it a go for a year and if I don’t like it I can leave’ contingent. It’s keeping people that’s the sticking point.

And that’s the bit they never want to address.

As you know, I'm about to start my PGCE. I'm not doing it for the money. Even on the new NQT wage I will be earning nowhere near what I left my previous career on PART TIME.

Mind you I have to get through the course first. I also have a degree in maths but because of a level don't qualify for a bursary. It's costing 9k, a loss of years wages as a TA and extra childcare costs that I didn't have before.

One potential (hopefully) teacher that isn't in it for the money.

Honey these are a couple of the options.

If I go with my very cynical head I could think they actually want to totally bring the profession to total breaking point and use that to make it a non professional, super cheap job with very little entry requirements and just babysitting the proles kids.

I can’t read one of them due to font but the other gives a 900 rise to M6 which to me feels a bit insulting given the rises M1 has seen in recent years and the fact we’ve been through pay freezes

Honey here is a better link that isn't blurry

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/schoolsweek.co.uk/dfe-2020-teacher-pay-proposals-rise-will-cost-schools-455m-plus-6-more-findings/amp/

I'm MPS3 so under £30k, they can't up NQTs to £30k without changing that surely?

With regards to printing I tried to set work for my y12s that they could read on their phone, handwrite on any paper available and then photograph with phone to submit - it made it a bit trickier to mark but worked ok.

@Flagsfiend

I'm MPS3 so under £30k, they can't up NQTs to £30k without changing that surely?

With regards to printing I tried to set work for my y12s that they could read on their phone, handwrite on any paper available and then photograph with phone to submit - it made it a bit trickier to mark but worked ok.

This is an example of what it may look like.