Should part time teachers mark less mocks than full time staff?

[Staranise101]

Hi there
I have just taken on a part time teaching job, which I love. I have a 1 year old, and wanted to make sure I see him on some of my days.
Don't get me wrong- I love my job, I throw myself into my team and have been getting on really well at work. I expect to work on my days off (and do regularly, from home, marking or email checking, planning and admin- you know, the usual) and I have received great feedback thus far.
The only thing is, I have to ask- what is the policy when it comes to part time teachers and mock marking? Should part time teachers be expected to mark as many mocks as full time members of staff across a half term?
Please help me, as I've been having panic attacks all day when I saw an email from my boss saying how much we are expected to do on our weeks off next week over Half term. I am taking my son away for half term and will have him for 7 nights on my own. I am not sure how I am going to get this done. What is the normal ethos in secondary schools?

Why didn’t you talk to your head following the email before the holidays?

Irrespective of responses - for this time around you have to do it because you didn’t let him know otherwiseb

Oh wait your half term is next week!!

in that case, talk to him!!

Do you know for a fact that you’re doing the same as a full timer?

Regardless of how much you do compared to full time colleagues, your headteacher/head of department has no right to dictate what you do during your time off.

As teachers we all know deep down that some aspects of our job will need to be completed in our own time, in order to get it all done, but they have no right to dictate that you do it in half term. They can by all means set deadlines, which might mean we have to work into our evenings/weekends/holidays to meet them, but they can't say outright "you need to do this next week", ie during half term. That is your time and it's completely up to you to decide whether you can/want to complete any school work during half term or whether you take it as a complete break for family time.

I'm not secondary so have no experience of marking mocks but to answer your question I would assume your workload should indeed reflect your working hours, compared to full time staff. You'll need to clarify this with them, and also clarify when the marking is meant to be done by. If they genuinely are saying this marking needs to take place during your half term holiday I would seek union advice tbh as that's not on.

That’s crazy - I would not ask my department to mark any mocks over half term. The expectation would be to get them done either before the holidays or allow time after the holiday. With regard to the number, we mark the number of mocks correlating to the number of students we teach - generally part time teachers have fewer classes and so will teach less across the year. As hod if I have less to mark I will sometimes take extra to relieve pressure from those with the most to mark.

What's the deadline for marking? If there's no option but to mark them over the half term as the deadline is too tight, then that's entirely unreasonable. Does your school have a marking policy that stipulates reasonable deadlines? If they don't, maybe suggest that? If you don't want to personally suggest that, could you do it via the Union, if they have a working relationship with the Head? As for part-time Vs full time marking, that depends how all workload is distributed. At my school we just make our classes' mocks. Therefore the workload for part-timers is reduced because they have fewer classes. If they HoD has just split them evenly then I would say that's unfair. The only rational I could see for it is if there's some members with lots of KS3 for example, then they'll be doing much less work than someone with KS4 and KS5. What's fair really depends on your total workload compared to others, not just the mock marking.

The deadline might be tight, but if you teach a class of the year group doing the assessment, surely, you'll get a full set to mark (whether they're yours or random/anonymous) and that's the right number. I'm guessing the part time allocation comes with not being responsible for as many classes / year groups and therefore data drops/parents' eves ect.

What is your subject? Do you have your own exam group or do you share them? Have you received any gained time during the mock exam period?

I was a PT English teacher for years, so masses of marking. If I had my own class, or all but one lesson, I marked my own. If I shared the class we took half each. We had a disastrous year when we attempted block marking as a department and on that occasion I took a full component.

Email the manager saying you're away for the whole of half term. Don't explain further.

This does my head in. In my last job in the UK I was in charge of assessment and reporting. Every time I sent in the calendar for marking mocks to be done (which always assumed no holiday work) SLT would change it. I would change it back for publication and no-one seemed to notice.

In every school I've taught in, we mark mocks for our own exam classes. As a full timer (who would love to be part time, btw and can't afford it), I'd be pretty resentful if it was suggested I mark someone else's mocks because they were part time. To be honest, I'd probably refuse.

If it's split up randomly so you don't mark your own students, I think it should be proportional to the number of exam classes you teach. So if everyone else teaches 2 Y11 classes, and you teach one, then fair enough you only mark half what others do. If you teach 2 Y11 classes and so does everyone else, then I think it's fair that everyone marks the same amount.

However, no-one should be suggesting anyone is marking over half term- it's your holidays, and they can't direct you to do work in them.

I would respond to the email and say that you aren't able to mark over half term (don't get into why) and can the deadline be extended. Others are probably feeling the same, and will be thankful you have spoken up.

I don’t actually think it’s your hours that should dictate how much marking you do, but your timetable, if that makes sense?

We mark proportionally to the number of classes we teach, so for Year 11 mocks, for example, I’ll have a LOT of marking, but for Year 8 exams, I won’t have any.

I agree with PPs that setting a deadline that requires you to use half term is terrible management and should be avoided. I also always set deadlines for Fridays so that there’s no expectation that anyone works on a weekend. Occasionally, colleagues will ask to extend the deadline to the Monday as it works better for them, but I would never insist that work is done over half terms or weekends.

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Thanks, guys. It kind of got sorted- just worked out in the end as the FT teachers happened to teach Lit and Lang, and I just teach Lit, so I did only have to mark half - so it worked out. If I happened to have 2 Lit classes, I would have still happened to mark as much as the FT teachers, which I don’t think would be right, but hey. I personally feel we should have been able to mark our own students’ mocks, but that didn’t happen, which meant at least I got to see some brilliant examples of other teachers’ students’ work, and I’ll get mine back to give to them. Thanks for your advice!

If I happened to have 2 Lit classes, I would have still happened to mark as much as the FT teachers, which I don’t think would be right, but hey.

It would have been right though, because there would be other things you don’t have to do on a part time timetable (year groups you don’t teach so you don’t need to mark their work or attend their parents’ evenings)

I personally feel we should have been able to mark our own students’ mocks

There are some really strong arguments for not doing this. 1) it avoids bias and ensures that the marking is consistent across the department 2) it generally reduces work load (if you mark one question for all students then you become an expert in that question and can mark more quickly than if you’re trying to mark a whole paper)

I have to say I don’t agree that block marking as described by the OP reduces workload: you have to mark your allocation and then go through your own class’s scripts almost as thoroughly as if you were marking them yourself. It does have other benefits, however, particularly that all members of the team and not just those with y11 classes are able to participate in standardisation and marking.

I’m glad that the matter was resolved for you OP but tbh unless you share a y11 group exactly 50-50 I don’t think being PT should necessarily mean that you mark fewer mocks.