What is normal? Gained time secondary school

[AddictedToTea]

I have worked in three secondary schools across my 20 year career. Two did not require any additional tasks to be completed in gained time. My new one requires me to make three new schemes of work (one GCSE and two for A level) as well as two knowledge organisers! I’m on a 0.8 timetable.

What is normal in your school?

I would say the new school is pretty normal. I’ve never not had gained time tasks. Of course whether or not the work load is reasonable depends on the length of the schemes of work and the amount of gained time you have.

I once worked in a school which launched the timetable for the new academic year in the last two weeks of the summer term, meaning that you had to establish yourself with your new classes at the point when everyone was at peak exhaustion, and if you were leaving you found yourself babysitting someone else's timetable. This is not normal. Being directed to undertake gained time tasks such as planning schemes for next year is very normal.

I've also never not had gained time tasks of some sort, and that's across four different schools. We've just sorted ours out today as it happens- everybody will still have plenty of time given that we gain at least 6 hours a week for the next six weeks, but everyone will be doing something useful to make next year easier/better/smoother. We do set it at faculty level though which probably helps keep it meaningful

I have no department gained time tasks. This is because I have so many of my own tasks that I have no actual gained time.

It's perfectly acceptable to give gained time tasks but it should be equitable.

One of mine did this too! 🥴

Thank you for the responses. Looks like I was just lucky before.

I’m at an independent school (in case it makes a difference). We are trusted to developed our own gained time tasks - nothing formally set but most people have something they are using the time for. I’m reworking the A level scheme of work and reviewing the year 11 gcse resources.

Might depends how big your team is too- there's 8 of us so we have to coordinate otherwise we could be replicating tasks/missing stuff out