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.

We've had 1 x hour CPD staff mtg + 1 x hour SLT meetings throughout. We also has normal book scrutiny and obs. Some on Teams, some F2F.

I am sure that some schools dish that out in the last few days with the opinion that it is too late to resolve and staff will get over it by September

Is it uncharitable how cross I keep getting every time I see an interview or an article mentioning CV or CEV people being thrown to the wolves by the govt on 19th July? Do people not realise that CV and CEV people have already been back at work in schools, hospitals, factories and other close contact workplaces for months?

Honey Do they have the directed time budget to do that? I'm at a place where we collectively say no to anything enforced that isn't directed time. What people "volunteer" to attend is different. For eg ECTs have one hour of directed time after school each week that is taken from their TT hours. If anyone really pushed this it probably isn't totally legit but the pay off is an 'extra' free.

Apparently it all fits in directed time and they have done a break down. It just makes for long days and time that would be spent marking or contacting parents or planning or whatever being used to sit in meetings instead. I do also think it's even more of a bummer if you need to pay for extra childcare for it or don't have a sahp at home dealing with things.

I'm not a fan of meetings or collective cpd tbh. I don't tend to find them productive uses of time and my brain is frazzled by the end of a day's teaching and I just want to get admin tasks done and get out of there and go deal with my son and dinner etc not sit around waiting for people to turn up and faff about and then use up time on things that aren't useful for all.

One of the small mercies of teaching for me is that whilst there are hours of extra work you have the freedom to do them when and where works for you and I value that and do a lot of work at home in the early mornings on work days or weekends. Spending longer hours in school does not appeal to me. Plus the more hours of meetings the more everyone assuming I'll be happy to just round up all duties, meetings etc etc to 50% pisses me off. I may have to start defending that 10%.

Definitely defend the 10%.
I agree re whole school CPD. We get a weekly offering. It's crap.

My tt for this past year was horrible - 4 days, so only entitled to 2h PPA - both on the same day. Then 3 full days. Nearly killed me. This year I'm not teaching year 7, so I'm "available for cover" during several hours. And my PPAs are on different days, woohoo!

The last time I actually got my full ppa was 3 schools ago in a one form entry where they gavd it to me at home as I was 85%. Since then, i haven't had my full allocation. Usually i end up having to get my Bobs in my 1.5 hours anyway because the PE bods and TA can't cope. I would rather they just stop pretending it's a useful thing. Either that or savd it up and give me a full day at home every month.

@DanglingMod

Is it uncharitable how cross I keep getting every time I see an interview or an article mentioning CV or CEV people being thrown to the wolves by the govt on 19th July? Do people not realise that CV and CEV people have already been back at work in schools, hospitals, factories and other close contact workplaces for months?

I feel exactly the same. Not me, but colleagues.

I don't actually think anything in my life changes on the 19th. I'll still be working in person but not able to fly to see my family safely. That changes once I have my second jab but 2 weeks after me second jab doesn't happen until the end of August. Just in time for school!

Thanks Herc. It feels petty but it all adds up. I've added up all the cpd meetings, department meetings and intake evening of next term and multiplied by 0.4 and I'm going to email head of dept and head of T&L with the breakdown and say please let me know which meetings you'd like me to prioritise. Feels petty but I'm done with just putting up. Will do it at the start of each term.

I think if you do a paid lunch duty at our school that means you don't have to do normal duty. I have a free and lunch back to back one day a week next year so I am going to check that's still the case and if so take a lunch duty on that day. That way I'll always have my afternoon break. I can't do 3 hours without going to the toilet and my duty always seems to get put on the most stupid day and again - rounded up.

If TT guy has managed to move the lesson he said he had I actually have no trapped time and if I can get rid of break time duties the longest I ever go without accessing a toilet will be 2 and a bit hours.

This year I did the duties of a full timer but we were so over run that I didn't have it in me to complain and just did it. We had no afternoon break so it was after school duties which I find easier anyway as I'm not panicking that I need to be in going to the toilet and getting to my next lesson.

I've added up all the cpd meetings, department meetings and intake evening of next term and multiplied by 0.4 and I'm going to email head of dept and head of T&L with the breakdown and say please let me know which meetings you'd like me to prioritise.

This isn't petty, this is exactly what should be happening. Don't do it by term, do it for the whole year and include INSET days and parents evenings.

I sit down with my HOD in September and we do this every year. There's a school spreadsheet for calculating it all. I couldn't do as many after school meetings this year so I did an extra INSET.

My 2 out of 5 inset days are already accounted for so I don't have to factor in twilights. I obviously can't do 2 out of 5 parents evenings as I teach 3 year groups but I would feel petty if I factored that in. The number of CPD evenings varies each term to accommodate twilight insets and parents evenings so I figured let them decide each term. It's also the kind of drip feed reminding of boundaries needed to create a change in expectations I think otherwise it'll just slide again.

Sounds like your school handles part timers well. Mine not so much.

I would feel petty if I factored that in

It's all directed time and it should all be taken into consideration. It's not petty, it's your contract.

My school is shit with part timers. So many have had rows, tears, and quit over how we are treated.

And despite being that bad, we still have a directed time spreadsheet. Aim your expectations a little higher, Honey!

Part timers are entitled to their own directed time calendar!!!
My last school made part timers catch up Inset and if you were sick on inset day/evening, you were expected to make that up too. That head is legendary in union circles!!!!

Fortunately I have two inset days that fall on my contracted days this term and that will be my lot. Normally pressured into doing an extra unpaid day in September but not happening anymore.

I think I'm also going to have to tell my HOD not to contact me on my day off to ask me to come in early, outside of my contract hours, to meet her the next fucking day because she can't bear to stay in school for 5 minutes after the end of the school but is perfectly happy to make me come in outside of my directed time.

Fuck it. All the way this year! And the next person who tone trolls an email or a question is going to have me directly ask them if they have EVER done that to a male colleague?

I need something like an online calculator but one which keeps track of all of the sums for me to print off and annotate. Does such a thing exist? I've just done my directed time and taken off teaching and ppa and the ten mins early and late we're required to be in for unoffical duty and duties and parents evenings and what remains is about 35 minutes a week but they think I'll be in meetings, on detention rotas etc. There's a slide somewhere of how they calculated directed time this year and I think I need to translate all of it into 0.4fte. You're all right. If everyone else has a breakdown and it isn't petty for full timers to query and see how it all breaks down then it isn't petty for me either.

I didn't do inset if it was on my day off, not unless they paid me to do it or gave me a day in lieu.

Only one break duty a week next year, which is a great after this year of duty hell.

I hate to say it but Rule but something about chickens and counting springs to mind there.... touch wood quick.

If you're in the NASUWT, there's a directed time calculator in the members' area - you need to log in. I assume the NEU will have one too.

I don't know if this is accurate or not, but I was told when I went part time that INSET and parents evenings were pro rata, but normal after school meetings were "attend if you work that day". Any union bods able to confirm/refute?

I am NASUWT. Parents evenings can't be pro rata but meetings should be. You can't say well I teach 5 year groups but I'm on 0.4 so I'm only going to do 2 parents evenings - that would be really unprofessional and to the detriment of parents and students.

Actually you can refuse to attend parents' evening on your days off. They should pay you to attend if it's not a working day.
I don't know anyone who would refuse though... but our staff do get paid on their non working days.