Salaried Teacher Training - When do you plan?

[Likereally]

Hello,

I am considering applying for a salaried teacher training course, which has an 80% workload over four days, with Fridays being professional development days.

When beginning such a role, when do you get to plan for the lessons, especially if you are a new trainee? It’s salaried so from what I have read you have to hit the ground running, but if you haven’t been in the school or had access to any schemes of work, how does it work?

Also, do you have to plan all lessons from scratch? Do teachers in a large school share planning?

Sorry if the answers are the obvious!

Any other info would be much appreciated! Especially any question I would need to ask at interview that might not occur to me at the moment!

Thank you 🌸

This is my experience from 29 years in primary schools.

All teachers have PPA (planning, preparation and assessment time) it's 10% of your teaching week. This is when most teachers do their planning. It isn't enough, hence why many(most) teachers work in the evenings and weekends.

Some schools give you a morning or afternoon free to plan, others give odd hours here and there, which is ridiculous and pointless. I teach in a decent school and we can work from home for PPA which is a massive plus.

Primary schools often buy into schemes, particularly for foundation subjects. We use Grammarsaurs and Kapow.

If you teach in a 2 or 3 form entry school, teachers may plan for a subject and then share it e.g.one teacher would plan the maths for half a term, whilst the other plans the English.

There are other sites you can access resources e.g TES, Twinkl but these on,y limited free resources before you have to subscribe.

I would imagine your first week with your class ( if starting in September) you'd do some getting to know you type activities,thus giving you chance to begin planning for the following week.

In teaching your list never ends and you're always thinking ahead.
Good luck

Primary or secondary?

For me in primary, planning is far far less arduous than it used to be because we use things like White Rose booklets for maths. Most of our curriculum is planned and has already been taught at least once now and I'd imagine, given where we are in the Ofsted framework, that's the same for most schools so there's little planning from nothing. I think the word 'planning' is often used as shorthand though for other jobs and these are what take time. Even though I've taught ever lesson on my curriculum before, I still have to print out the resources, trim them, find the magnets/book/watercolours or whatever that support the lesson, print a learning objective onto stickers etc. None of this takes much time by itself but all these 3 or 4 minute jobs add up. That of course doesn't cover all the ad hoc stuff that comes up - IEPs, forms for paediatricians, displays, actions from staff meetings, emails etc.

Most of the above I can do between 8 and 9, 3.30 and 5 and 2.5 hours of PPA. Will you get non-contact time during your 80% time I wonder, just like a 0.8 teacher would? I simply wouldn't undertake the training otherwise. And yes, generally you need to hit the ground running on the first day which involves going in in the summer unpaid and setting up resources. Quite honestly if you've never taught before I just don't know how that would work but there must be a plan in place so it would be a sensible question to ask.

Thank you for your replies!

I guess the main thing I was worried about was that lots will be going into these salaried posts with no teaching experience, and I’m wondering how on earth they can plan lessons so quickly with little or no experience in this situation.

Will definitely try to get some clarifications!

(It’s a secondary position)

I think there’s a two week training thing but still, with a PGCE there is gradual increase of lesson load which goes upto 80% in the last term

but with this it’s 80% off the bat

It does depend what subject tbh. It makes a huge difference.

I did an employment-based training route for secondary English. I was in a large team who shared centralised planning and I worked every evening. It was not sustainable but I was young and child-free.

I did a salaried training role but I was accepted because I had years of school experience... the other 2 salaried students on my course also had years of experience. It was easier for us to hit the ground running as we'd all taught unqualified or worked as LSAs in the subject for years.
What is your background / school experience?

@ThanksItHasPockets it will be in secondary science

@shardlakem I am not a teacher but have experience. I was just wondering how it would be to be honest, if there was a system in place generally speaking!

@Likereally with a sensible timetable you'll be able to use one lot of planning for several lessons. Science departments tend to have good schemes of work in place, so you just follow that for each class. Hopefully there are resources in place for each lesson too.
You'll still need to familiarise yourself with these.
Teaching is brutal in the first years - be prepared to take work home every day.
Be super organised and keep a schedule to stay on top of marking.
I'd also ask your school if they have schemes of work and central resources - I'd be tempted to run away if th answer is no!

If you are secondary science then I would recommend doing a PGCE instead. With a £26-29k tax free bursary that will surely be more than what they're paying you to do a much harder, drop you in at the deep end route?

Are you sure that’s correct? I support apprentice teachers who are salaried and their programme starts off gently and builds up to 80% over the year. Perhaps look at other options available to you - the 80% in at the deep end course surely can’t provide you with much support?

@noblegiraffe agree with the PGCE comment. This route is unnecessarily tough unless someone has lots of previous experience. Look at 'getintoteaching' for details of bursaries and scholarships.

Thank you for all the comments - really appreciate it 🌸