I've been teaching in a free school in England for a few years. Before that I had worked in LA schools but there aren't many LA primary schools left in my area. I've just logged in to my school email before the start of term and seen an email from the head with details about how the working conditions have been changed. There was no warning and no negotiation. The changes include:
- We will now have to do lunch duty for 35 minutes on our PPA day which means we will only have 20 minutes of lunch break one day per week and 55 minutes on the other 4 days.
- There will be 6 nights of parents' evening per academic year instead of 4. They will be until 20:30 in response to parent feedback. Previously they were until 19:00.
- There will not be class TAs except for reception in September. We knew this was coming because they have not managed to recruit any and for various reasons almost all of our TAs left during the summer term or at the end of the summer term. As the TAs do all of the PPA cover this means no PPA until they manage to hire someone.
- We have 3 new SEN programmes starting, one for fine motor skills, one called colourful semantics and one with lego which we will have training for in the inset days. The email says that class teachers will be responsible for finding times to run them and suggests we are "creative" about when. It suggests lunch breaks, the beginning of PPA time or before school as suitable times and is very clear that it is not to be done during lesson times, assembly etc.
- Our staff meetings will now be until 17:30 one night per week. It used to be until 17:00.
- There is absolutely no money budgeted for supply teachers. When teachers are off sick they will be covered by members of the SLT. We will be required to send in lesson plans and mark the work when we get back.
- There is a “jokey” comment saying that the school cannot afford to cover anyone taking maternity leave and encouraging us to keep that in mind.
I've already been accepted to start a PhD in January so I am leaving and I don't really need a reference. I'm facing a bit of a dilemma now though. I don't know if I'd be better off just counting down the days until I leave and trying to let go of the stress and pressure to protect myself from burning out, or fighting them because this is in breach of our contracts. Our contracts state our hours are set by the School Teachers’ Pay and Conditions Document i.e. 1265 hours of work spread over 195 days with 10% PPA time. The new requirements will take us way over that. I think my union rep would be supportive of me if I wanted to fight this but I just don't know if I want to. I also feel quite sorry for the SLT who are really struggling to make ends meet and were very honest in the email that we do not have enough money to run the school next year. Has anyone been in a similar situation and how did you respond?