The Sixty-fourth Republic - good luck to those still gliding towards the holidays especially after euro final

[StaffRepFeistyClub]

You are most welcome to this school staff support thread to get us through stressful times. It is meant for school staff only – a sort of room of requirement for school staff to let off steam.

Baiters, haters, goaders, and bashers can jog on somewhere else.

If you are NOT staff and just have a general education query please start your own thread.

Do not give the staffroom password to non-staff as it attracts the wrong sort of crowd.

Other requirements for staff room entry include the ability to find the staff room, the ability to find a clean mug in the staff room, knowledge of the photocopier codes, and the ability to sniff out where the booze is stashed - Thirsty Tuesdays, Fizz Fridays now in operation.

We are still waiting advice on chairs and masks but keep the windows open. You don’t have to upload LFT results during the holidays.Do not sit on the chairs and do wear a mask.

I would hate to be the timetabler. There's no way you can make everyone happy.

True. But you can be a bit better than mine!

I remember my Science teacher showing me how he did the timetable when i was at Secondary school. He had a pinboard and coloured pins.
He loved doing it. I remember thinking that he looked as happy as one of us playing with a Rubik's cube.

(That's brought back a lovely memory. I really liked him. He was a wonderful teacher.)

I would LOVE to get involved in timetabling!

We have 25 periods per week and have 3 frees but usually only two are timetabled as PPA. If you have a responsibility you get some time if there is any but it’s a bit dependent on who you are sometimes and who is doing the dept timetable. Nearly everyone is a form tutor on top.

Tt is done by a maths teacher here, and he has 2 assistants, one is another maths teacher and the other is a French teacher who has a mathematical background before teaching. They decided they needed a team when the main guy had a heart attack (he's absolutely fine now, five/six years on) and they discovered that nobody else knew how to do the job. That was a tricky year for the timetable. That was the year they decided that more than one teacher knowing the further maths pure content would be a good idea as well.

I never think you have bad grammar etc honey! (But I might observe that you are a little quick to criticise yourself sometimes - ?)

And that sounds like a great idea, replacing IE with YourMumHastoCollectYou E!

5 full days (assuming here that your school is a 2 week TT) is not on! Whoever allocates needs to look at this again.

We are a 1 week and our main scales teach 22/25. When I did the TT, I worked really hard to ensure no one had 3 or 4 full days. It's exhausting to have that.

I teach 19/25 as assistant head of faculty and the HoF teaches 17/25 so we are lucky.

Thanks for the new thread Staff

Just booked my winter flu jab for September, never had one before (bar swine flu 11.5 years ago) but I think this autumn is going to be a total disaster. Also not letting the —Brexit— Covid stockpile run down, which we were considering.

Brexit should be crossed through but I can’t make it work 🤷‍♀️

Brexit

Thanks for the new thread @StaffRepFeistyClub

Timetabling sounds like my actual worst nightmare.

Still not got mine. But on the basis I got the current year's at the staff BBQ outside on the last day I don't hold out much hope of it being earlier this year.

We have 25 periods per week and have 3 frees but usually only two are timetabled as PPA
PPA has to be 10% and cannot be rounded down.
I really am petty 🤣

Also not letting the —Brexit— Covid stockpile run down, which we were considering.

Same here. I had a proper 3 month 'shut the doors and lock ourselves in' Brexit stockpile by March 2019. I'm not saying this was normal or sane, but it was my coping mechanism at the time. We've eaten a lot of it down in order to do the house renovation, but I'll be building it back up as soon as we have our new kitchen in.

Reading all this stuff about timetables made me actually look at my working hours. I had no idea. We have 28 and 3/4 hour directed time from September between 8.30 and 3.30 with an hour and a quarter unpaid between those hours. We get one whole day PPA every two weeks, which is 5 and 3/4 hours.

I think... I can't work it out. That's about 10% isn't it?

I also get 10% management time over 2 weeks, but that can be taken away at any point. I haven't had it for 3 weeks, and it's not on the diary for the rest of term I notice.

@MrsHamlet

We have 25 periods per week and have 3 frees but usually only two are timetabled as PPA PPA has to be 10% and cannot be rounded down. I really am petty 🤣

We've challenged this before at my school, and were told that as we don't lose frees every week, or even every fortnight, we still get our full 10% PPA. And it does work out over the year that we get a bit more than 10% PPA, but I did begrudge it when I lost all 3 frees in one week to do CAT tests this year, while there were other teachers who gained 3 frees that same week.

@MrsHamlet

We have 25 periods per week and have 3 frees but usually only two are timetabled as PPA PPA has to be 10% and cannot be rounded down. I really am petty 🤣

Everyone gets the third - but if you have day four frees by fluke two are fixed and you’ll get one of the other free depending on needs that week …

Brexit should be crossed through but I can’t make it work

Don’t worry no one can make Brexit work.

We definitely don't get 10% - we get one (short) afternoon per week, which looks like half a day but isn't.

Once a year, or twice if I am really lucky, I get a subject leader morning. This is so obviously insufficient for a 'big' subject - I am Maths - that I will be almost glad if DD's PCR does come back positive as the 5 days of next week might just be almost enough for me to catch up with the worst of the backlog. Given that I had to re-design the curriculum post lockdown 1, and now have to redo the plan for next year to fill any weak areas from lockdown 2 (when we taught live online) AND deal with the fact that teaching objectives not taught in school during lockdown 1 (when we did asynchronous nline learning) has pushed some chunks of each year group's usual curriculum off the end....

22/25 hours at my school for mainscale teachers.

Can't believe you get an extra free for bring a FT at one school! Seems generous.

I know some schools that give three frees but make staff pay it back with cover because you're technically only entitled to 2.5... Seems very tight!

I suppose it's 24.5/27.5 if you include 30 mins form time a day, so similar to primary really.

When I started teaching, the timetable for the next year was done by a DH sitting at the back of one of the school summer day out buses. He was excused activities and was allowed to smoke (well, we had a smoking staff room then). It was a biggish secondary school.
He may have done some work on it other than on the school trip, but certainly liked to give the impression that it was all done in that time.

I kind of think I would like to get involved with timetabling. Bet it’s a nightmare though.

@WhenSheWasBad

Brexit should be crossed through but I can’t make it work

Don’t worry no one can make Brexit work.

Well, there is that I suppose 😂

I would love to work on the timetable, I have dabbled a little and staffed my departments for several years. Love a good puzzle.

We have a 2 week timetable and 5 lesson days. So you’d get 5 per fortnight. Rather jealous of some on here.

I’m 0.4 so 1 free per week.

And yes it’s 10% of lesson time and ignores form time-non contact time was a misnomer.

What I’m dreading next year is a big increase in after school meetings and cpd. It’s killing me not to ask if they’ve done an equality impact assessment. Pretty obvious female staff with young children will be hit hard.

All proper S slt have wives or adult children.