Directed time vs actual task length

[Elendel]

Out of interest, how much time is being allocated for tasks you're all being directed to do? I am finding more and more instances in which we're being being directed to complete training in our own time, or have some limited time to complete tasks which inevitably take longer than the allocated slot time.

Recent examples were online training lasting 45min, for which we were generously being given 15min morning briefing time, a directed task likely to take me (computer literate, fast typer, know the scheme of work in and out) 3 full working days, for which we had 3 hours to start the work and complete the rest in our own time, which will take some more inexperienced and some elderly colleagues about twice as long. We also have 15min allocated after school to do all of restorative conversations, behaviour phone calls and attendance phone calls and then get complaints of senior leaders when this is not all completed.

It seems the norm in my school (and also my previous one) to do this, so I am wondering whether this is typical or whether - despite the work from our union reps - our school is taking the complete proverbial?

Should not behaviour phone calls and behaviour phone calls be done by Pastoral Support and/or the Year Head (or am I being naïve?). If you are feeling rebellious you could always start and not finish the task and see what happens. To answer the last part an emphatic yes.

Pastoral staff do not have the time for the majority of calls that we need to make. The expectation for teaching staff is to make a call every time a child is sent out of the room (which, given the poor behaviour around the school generally, is often 1-4 students daily), and if a child is getting repeat detentions in lessons. We're also meant to make a positive call home weekly as tutors.

Pastoral staff make calls for uniform, to set up meetings over whole-school behaviour issues, to deal with the many complaints the school is getting from parents, but they're also on call or in the reset room every lesson, so their time, too, is limited.

The snow yesterday shut the school down due to, among other things, the head recognising that most of us had our childcare for the day cancelled. So it was well-known we'd be looking after our children. Yet we had emails expecting us to provide online learning (fair to a point, though at least 2 members of the department do not have IT equipment at home) and have been directed to rewrite a scheme of work as well as complete some more online training, which has now piled up on top of the rest of the work.

I don't think it's unfair to expect you to provide online learning on a snow day, although it should be ensured that everyone has the right equipment beforehand if this is the expectation. Some of your post I agree you are being unfairly treated - like the task that will take you 3 days (and some of your colleagues 6 days?!). But I don't add up tasks so specifically and see if they fit into my directed time, I just see them as part of my salaried role.

As I said, the online learning part was fair enough and didn't take too long.

The rest was a bit unreasonable given the head knew most of us wouldn't be able to work, but fine in principle (we're being paid, after all). That said, the work we've been directed to do will add up to 3 hours training, 6 hours scheme of work rewriting - together with the other admin work, it adds up to longer than a school day again.

And when it happens over and over, you do start to log the time spent vs the time given, because the contract says "reasonable extra hours", not "all waking hours". What the teaching job has become in the 20 years I have done it has ever expanded, so what is now part of the job was definitely not what I signed up for.

Yeah I think that's the overall problem, that the workload has ballooned to something unmanageable, so every extra task becomes the straw the breaks the camel's back. Your SMT do sound very unsympathetic and unreasonable. Would you consider moving schools?

I think it's a regional thing, or the number of reasonable schools is ever shrinking. I have had the opportunity to sample working at 3 schools over the last few years, have friends in other schools in the area and it appears to be the same everywhere here. Stressed staff, workload unreasonable, high turnover. It seems the only way to have a halfway decent balance is to go into senior leadership. I'm not being cynical; someone who went into the job said they have a better work life balance now than as a middle leader in the same school. The job still piles up, but because there is far less marking and planning to do, it is less work overall.

Such a depressing thought - go into middle management and keep heaping the same work on others that made you want to leave… something has got to change eventually…I’m sorry you’re in this position. I have gone private and find it better. My school is one of the good ones, and people rarely leave as we’re know we’re lucky!

Do you have a union rep?

It sounds as if your rep (or reps) need to have a conversation with the head about what constitutes 'reasonable additional hours' required to meet professional standards. However, these standards are set out in the actual Teachers' Standards. You might like to start by having a read through that to work out what is a professional standard and what isn't a professional standard.

You've given some examples:
Online training - was it necessary for you to meet any of the standards?
The directed task that took 3 days - again, necessary?
RJs - most likely necessary.

BUT THE THING IS if this is work in your own time, i.e. because you're at capacity in terms of your directed time when they give you 3 hours but it actually takes 3 days, then the school can't tell you when or how to do it. That would be a breach of your terms and conditions. In other words, they simply can't state the 'reasonable additional hours' clause AND determine when or when by these additional hours need to be worked.

If your reps are struggling, kindly suggest they should contact branch who will come in and speak to the head.

online training should say roughly the average of how long it will take. This time should be given by cancelling the staff meeting that week.

Overwork is an issue everywhere.

Could you look at using AI to shorten some of those tasks? Or put the online training on to play whilst you get on with other things?

(Edited to add that I am not saying it is right, just making suggestions as to how you could improve the current situation.)

Thinking about tasks that require extra time/workload, that people say ‘well, it comes under any “reasonable” extra hours” in our contract - I heard an educational pundit recently say that if your directed hours are, say, 8:30 - 3:30, but that you are in school or working daily, from 7:30 - 5:30 (certainly fairly normal for Primary) because you need that time to just do the normal prep, mark, plan etc then that is an additional 3 hours a day, 15 hours a week. Let’s take off a couple of hours for regular meetings after school that are part of directed hours. That still leaves you working an extra 13 hours a week, 494 hours a year on top of your directed time allocation (more than a third again extra).

And that amount of time alone should absolutely count as ‘reasonable additional hours’ without having to ever work in the evenings or weekends. Made me think. Doesn’t help you, though. I do think that you are being asked to do too many additional hours to cover extra directed tasks, that you should be given time for. Union involvement would be helpful.

The union reps are bashing their heads against a brick wall in my school and there has been repeated talk of strike action, but it never comes to fruition. Part of this is that data is never accurate - we have (in the past) had people being pulled up on their honest reponses to surveys, so now barely anyone is honest in these anymore, for fear of putting their heads above the parapet.

The latest training was completely useless and unnecessary for teaching staff (my partner works in the sector it addressed and said he couldn't believe we were made to work through it), and the one we've been asked to complete on Friday is only useful for those who use a certain type of technology regularly already. But it is an expectation, therefore we will be chased for it and pulled up on not completing it.

The reps shouldn't be bashing their heads against a brick wall, they should be calling in branch for support.

Local strikes for local issues (e.g. routine breaches of the STPCD in a particular school) attract strike pay.

This: "Fear of putting their heads above the parapet," suggests your union is weak.

And this: "The latest training was completely useless and unnecessary for teaching staff," suggests that someone's doing coaching / CPD bollocks to enhance their own climb up the greasy pole.

I mean, on your own, you could simply say: "I tried to do as much as I could in the directed time available, and this is how far I got." Leave them to come up with the solution. If it's "Well, you'll have to do it in your own time then," you can agree to that and then never do it because there's no capacity to do it in your own time.

I get what you're saying about this toxic creep, but there's only really two answers, you rep(s) grow a pair or you move schools.

I'm a rep.

I am getting pretty fed up of standing up for my members' rights to say "no" only to have them roll over.

"No we won't be doing that 45 minute training when you've only given us 15"

Meanwhile Mrs Martyr has done it. Great. Thanks for that.

Unions are only as strong as their members.