Fed up of all the crap

[BG2015]

I teach in a lovely rural primary school & we have a realistic SLT but even still they are pulled into the Ofsted expectations.

I've been teaching a long time (28 years) and the things we're expected to do make no difference to children's learning.

I'm fed up of sticking Knowledge Organisers into books for every topic that no child looks at, sticking marking keys at the front of every book - why? Year 1 don't care 🤷‍♀️ they don't look at them.

We are on our third English text books this year - that's 90 pieces of paper that needed sticking in and that's just for one subject.

In Science we do 6 topics and we have a knowledge organiser for each one.

At least we no longer do loads of in-depth marking.

My love of the job continues to wane.

Completely agree. People don't realise how long all this pointless printing takes either. It's death by a thousand papercuts because there are so many jobs like that. Thankfully we convinced out head (also a rural primary, very small so doesn't need many of us to revolt!) that knowledge organisers were pointless so that's one less thing. Of course, learning hasn't suffered in any way as they were completely pointless.

I know it's similar in secondary schools too. There's lots of things to do that seem to make little difference, they're just done for appearance but take up so much time!

I was thinking of doing a secondment as a primary school teacher, what would you say are the best and the worst things about it (just so I can take a balanced view!)?

In primary schools there is definitely a community/family feel. I teach in a small (200 on roll) church school. I've been here for 22 years.

I know not all primary schools are like this though.

We have a lot of quite fussy, demanding parents - but I'm not sure if this is a reflection on society today because in my early career this wasn't the case.

The children are hilarious and make you smile everyday! (I teach KS1) but they are also very needy and some lack independence. Again parents do too much for them.

There is never enough time to fit everything in and a lot is expected regarding changing display boards etc

I'm coming to the end of my career now. I used to love my job but I know I need to retire and find another job doing something that doesn't consume me!

I think it was the community feel in a smaller team that was what sounded appealing to me - I'm glad I wasn't wrong about that (although I apprciate it depends on the school and it sounds like you're one of the lucky ones)! And having students who lack independence and parents doing too much sounds like a common theme. Thank you for sharing.

I hate knowledge organisers

They are a device to make it look like the kids are proactively recording their work in a useable , helpful way. In reality it's just another example of edubollox that takes time and effort and achieves nothing.

5 years to retirement...