I know a few teachers (including family) and I have to say I don't know any that do anywhere near the hours mentioned on this thread.
Not disputing it doesn't happen though
Been arranging meetings with SENCo teachers at primary schools, and judging by the times offered, that seems starting every day at 7.00am and there some days until 5.30pm is fairly common.
I know a few teachers (including family) and I have to say I don't know any that do anywhere near the hours mentioned on this thread.
Not disputing it doesn't happen though
Been arranging meetings with SENCo teachers at primary schools, and judging by the times offered, that seems starting every day at 7.00am and there some days until 5.30pm is fairly common.
Are those hours that bad? Maybe it could be argued that they are not paid to do those hours (I have no idea how 'bad' an average teachers pay is) but then you have the holiday allowance as well. I see a 10.5 hour day as being fairly average?
I know a few teachers (including family) and I have to say I don't know any that do anywhere near the hours mentioned on this thread.
Not disputing it doesn't happen though
That's the same experience I have. Not saying it doesn't happen, but the teachers I know don't work that.
As one poster said, I am not calling it cushy. And it is a job that gives a lot back to the community when done well (I am massively appreciative of my 5 year old sons teacher, as she does an excellent job imo shaping his early life). And I am not against anyone questioning their pay - for instance some reports I hear of what nurses are paid is disgracefully low. But for me, I can only measure it against what I do:
1) I don't have a 'worthy' job that gives lots back to the country. I am a director of an advertising agency (the advertising thread is there to slate me for that, and I have taken a fair bit of cop so head over their for that job!). I am well aware that I am not saving lives, but I work hard at what I do to support my family and give my kids the best life possible. Work for me is a means to give them the best life possible
2) A normal days work is in the office at c7:30, and a good day would be leaving at 7pm (that's not including a 1 hour commute each way).
3) I actually get very good annual leave at 32 days per year (25 is standard, but I have more due to my level and years of service). But nothing like the level teachers get. And I am massively appreciative of what I do get and realise it is a blessing.
4) Took 1 day off yesterday to spend a belated birthday with my family. Dialled in to 2 conference calls, and spent the last 2 hours of the day answering e-mails. Repeat as desired for any holiday day which is not at least a 1 week break out the country (normally paid for at obscene rates due to not being able to take kids out of school due to risk of fine).
5) In my office, we currently have a high proportion of staff off with stress related illnesses. Ridiculous when you consider what it is we do, but that shows the pressure people are under. Crikey, look at the traders and stock brokers you hear throwing themselves off the top of buildings. Tragic, unnecessary, and a sign of what a high stress environment can do. Is the level of stress in teaching at that level.
So I wanted to respond to anyone who thinks I think teaching is a 'cushy' job. Well it would be a cushy job if you were paid £100k a year to do it, but you are not. As someone said, the pay and conditions is made perfectly clear to those who choose to go in to it.
I was aware of the hours and conditions of my job and career, but I was also aware that I could be paid well and support my family well if I worked hard to succeed. Hence why I will be sitting here late every night.
1. It is not all teachers striking, currently it is just the NUT I think.
2. It is not actually for more money. It is over pensions (essentially objecting to being asked to pay more and get less) and an issue of performance related pay progression (which I disagree with the NUT over and has already been implemented at the school I was until recently a governor of).
3. They will be fined for striking by not getting paid that day.
As for hours, it staggers me that people still believe teachers turn up 5 mins before the kids and leave 5 minutes later. My wife is a SENCO at her school and left this morning at 7.30 and will not be home till about 5.30. Yes people work longer hours than that but the stress and difficulty of a job does not equate to number of hours worked. I myself work a 37.5 hour week and get way more time off than when I worked in the city but the job is many times more stressful than an IT career.
I know a few teachers (including family) and I have to say I don't know any that do anywhere near the hours mentioned on this thread.
Not disputing it doesn't happen though
Been arranging meetings with SENCo teachers at primary schools, and judging by the times offered, that seems starting every day at 7.00am and there some days until 5.30pm is fairly common.
I see a 10.5 hour day as being fairly average?
It may well bebecoming increasingly common, but it is no way fairly average.
I know a few teachers (including family) and I have to say I don't know any that do anywhere near the hours mentioned on this thread.
Not disputing it doesn't happen though
Been arranging meetings with SENCo teachers at primary schools, and judging by the times offered, that seems starting every day at 7.00am and there some days until 5.30pm is fairly common.
My daughter is 7 next month and in year 2, she's got her parent / teacher thing in a few weeks (school seems to be closed for the day for it though I can't fathom why) - so as well as having to arrange childcare for the day (it's a Thursday) the only times they've given us to see the teacher is between 8.30 and 4 - very helpful if like me you work in the City.
I know a few teachers (including family) and I have to say I don't know any that do anywhere near the hours mentioned on this thread.
Not disputing it doesn't happen though
That's the same experience I have. Not saying it doesn't happen, but the teachers I know don't work that.
As one poster said, I am not calling it cushy. And it is a job that gives a lot back to the community when done well (I am massively appreciative of my 5 year old sons teacher, as she does an excellent job imo shaping his early life). And I am not against anyone questioning their pay - for instance some reports I hear of what nurses are paid is disgracefully low. But for me, I can only measure it against what I do:
1) I don't have a 'worthy' job that gives lots back to the country. I am a director of an advertising agency (the advertising thread is there to slate me for that, and I have taken a fair bit of cop so head over their for that job!). I am well aware that I am not saving lives, but I work hard at what I do to support my family and give my kids the best life possible. Work for me is a means to give them the best life possible
2) A normal days work is in the office at c7:30, and a good day would be leaving at 7pm (that's not including a 1 hour commute each way).
3) I actually get very good annual leave at 32 days per year (25 is standard, but I have more due to my level and years of service). But nothing like the level teachers get. And I am massively appreciative of what I do get and realise it is a blessing.
4) Took 1 day off yesterday to spend a belated birthday with my family. Dialled in to 2 conference calls, and spent the last 2 hours of the day answering e-mails. Repeat as desired for any holiday day which is not at least a 1 week break out the country (normally paid for at obscene rates due to not being able to take kids out of school due to risk of fine).
5) In my office, we currently have a high proportion of staff off with stress related illnesses. Ridiculous when you consider what it is we do, but that shows the pressure people are under. Crikey, look at the traders and stock brokers you hear throwing themselves off the top of buildings. Tragic, unnecessary, and a sign of what a high stress environment can do. Is the level of stress in teaching at that level.
So I wanted to respond to anyone who thinks I think teaching is a 'cushy' job. Well it would be a cushy job if you were paid £100k a year to do it, but you are not. As someone said, the pay and conditions is made perfectly clear to those who choose to go in to it.
I was aware of the hours and conditions of my job and career, but I was also aware that I could be paid well and support my family well if I worked hard to succeed. Hence why I will be sitting here late every night.
Would one like a medal?
Yes please. Preferably also a certificate like you used to get for school sports day (1 step, 2 step etc). But obviously a gold one.
And most importantly, a lifetime membership to the jelly of the month club.
I don't necessarily agree with this but just wanted to be the first to say it. You could apply it to the likes of Arsene Wenger, Jose Mourinho or Simon Cowell too I guess.
My wife is a SENCO and she puts in a hell of a lot of work. All the wives in our local friends set are teachers and again they work very long hours. I'm sure there are some who arrive as the bell goes in the morning and leave when the kids do and don't prepare their lessons and take dodgy sickies, in fact I know there are as my wife has told me. It's the same in all professions, you get good and bad.
I don't necessarily agree with this but just wanted to be the first to say it. You could apply it to the likes of Arsene Wenger, Jose Mourinho or Simon Cowell too I guess.
My wife is a SENCO and she puts in a hell of a lot of work. All the wives in our local friends set are teachers and again they work very long hours. I'm sure there are some who arrive as the bell goes in the morning and leave when the kids do and don't prepare their lessons and take dodgy sickies, in fact I know there are as my wife has told me. It's the same in all professions, you get good and bad.
It's a shame that most people seem to place their judgement of every profession on those few bad employees.
Can't name another line of work outside of Doctors/Nurses and the Armed Forces that have a positive stereotype.
All I can go on is my experience as a parent of three daughters one of whom taught abroad for a year and as a parent elected governor admittedly many years ago now.
Any Governors' Committee with teachers as members had to meet between 9.00 am and 4pm. That effectively debarred anyone who worked for a living, unless they were self employed or employed in the public sector, from becoming a governor.
Yes legally you are entitled to reasonable time off to perform duties as a School Governor but that time is unpaid (therefore unaffordable for many) and in a small organisation, particularly at busy times, totally unrealistic.
Once a term there was Parents' "Evening" between 4pm and 6:30 or 7pm usually. Again attendance for anyone that worked some distance from home as most do in the area was problematic. I actually campaigned, as Parent elected Governor, to get them to extend Parents' Evenings until 8pm when complaints were made by the School staff about "parent apathy." It happened but it caused resentment amongst the teaching staff.
I decided not to stand for re-election at the end of my term as Parent Governor because I could not give the job the best of my ability because of the difficulties mentioned above.
Things may well have changed in the present day but I can only quote my experience.
All I can go on is my experience as a parent of three daughters one of whom taught abroad for a year and as a parent elected governor admittedly many years ago now.
Any Governors' Committee with teachers as members had to meet between 9.00 am and 4pm. That effectively debarred anyone who worked for a living, unless they were self employed or employed in the public sector, from becoming a governor.
Yes legally you are entitled to reasonable time off to perform duties as a School Governor but that time is unpaid (therefore unaffordable for many) and in a small organisation, particularly at busy times, totally unrealistic.
Once a term there was Parents' "Evening" between 4pm and 6:30 or 7pm usually. Again attendance for anyone that worked some distance from home as most do in the area was problematic. I actually campaigned, as Parent elected Governor, to get them to extend Parents' Evenings until 8pm when complaints were made by the School staff about "parent apathy." It happened but it caused resentment amongst the teaching staff.
I decided not to stand for re-election at the end of my term as Parent Governor because I could not give the job the best of my ability because of the difficulties mentioned above.
Things may well have changed in the present day but I can only quote my experience.
My own experience as a governor was only one committee meeting started before 7pm and whilst some governor attendance required attendance during school hours these were no more than once or twice a term for each governor. Obviously each school is different and as a governor you are in a good position to fight to change these things.
I am not a teacher but my wife is a primary school teacher. I don't intend to argue about the rights or wrongs of strike action but I do feel that I should correct some of the more foolish statements on this thread.
1) "Teachers finish work at 4pm." They do not! Classroom time may well finish at 4pm but there are department meetings, staff meetings parent meetings, planning times,professional development, sports and other clubs to run. My wife as a not untypical example, she gets to school at 8.15am at the latest, sets up her class for the day, spends a maximum of ten minutes in the staffroom at lunchtime making a cup of tea before running a sports club on two lunchtimes, an arts club on another lunchtime and a comic making club another lunchtime. She keeps the final lunchtime free to work in her capacity as the technology coordinator to ensure that the school has all the resources it needs to teach that topic during the coming week. She also mentors student teachers and she uses this time to meet with them and discuss their progress.She never leaves her school before 5.15 at the earliest and usually nearer 6pm. After tea and a bath she will work doing planning or marking until about 9.30pm when we will settle down to watch something on the telly. Today is an exception as she is doing some training at another school after teaching which means she won't be in until about 7pm. We have an agreement that she won't do any further work tonight as it is our anniversary and we are going out for a meal. She will probably spend longer marking tomorrow to make up the time. At weekends she will work a minimum of eight hours doing further marking etc. Friday night her school is having a Valentine's disco for the kids and my wife is helping out which means she won't be in until 9.30 to 10 at the earliest.
Each term there are parents evenings. Typically these will take place on two or three evenings in a given week and will go on to about 8.30pm.
At report time she will usually spend upwards of 20 hours over two weekends completing the reports.
In all the time that she has been a teacher I have never known her work less than a 55hour week during term time and usually much more. To say that teachers finish work at 4pm with the implication that they work easy hours is plain stupid.
2) Teachers have 13 weeks holiday a year. No they don't! The the kids are off school but that doesn't mean that teachers totally down tools at the same time. The schools remain open for staff during most of the holiday time and most teachers will go into school at some times during the holidays. I kow that my wife plans to go into school at least twice during half term next week. In addition most teacers will use the holiday time to plan lessons, my wife is a primary school teacher which means that she could be teaching 5 year olds one year and 11 year olds the next. As the curriculum changes so frequently she has to make sure she is up to date with the latest developments. She will usuallu meet with the other teachers in her yeargroup in order to ensure that they co-ordinate their teaching. Even allowing for that the leave is quite generous but worth about half of the 13 weeks.
There are bad and lazy teachers as there are bad workers in every trade or profession, most of them get found out sooner or later. My wife works bloody hard and is not paticularly well paid. I work a lot less and get paid more. She loves her job and takes pleasure from doing a job that she feels is socially neccessary and useful. That is her motivation as it is for most teachers.
Whether teachers should strike or not may be an argument worth having but to imply that the majority of teachers are overpaid, workshy, feckless and have it cushy is riduculous.
Said it before, teaching is no more a 'profession' than a supermarket worker, a road sweeper, a plumber, a doctor or any other paid worker.
In relation to teachers, 'professional' is a word slung around to either provoke guilt, or get them to work for nothing.
Try asking a solicitor who charges £20 to view each email to work for nothing. Try asking my dentist, who works two days per week max, to sort out a crown for nothing.
Teachers are not professionals, they are (usually) adults paid money to use their time, and expertise (such as it is), to intervene in the lives of young people. Unless those young people are home tutored, by parents possibly, then they are in school with no choice according to the law.
So, you have to send your kids to school, you have to dress them however the school says, you have to keep sending them in or risk financial or other penalties, you have to allow Goves penalties, and others, to be visited upon those kids.
In that context, a poor system where most schools worry more about a visit from the Ofstapo than care about the young people, most teachers, stripped of autonomy, decent working conditions (buckets under holes in roofs for example) and public respect, are only supposed to get x number through y exams and they must score well.
Not the best example of an 'educational' system. Schooling yes, socialising to conform yes, but education? I doubt it.
The teachers are by and large quite heroic trying to cope with the system. When surveyed, the people who matter most, students, rate teachers on a par with parents for those they respect and trust.
Obviously the wider public don't feel the same way, neither it seems does Michael Gove, but credit those teachers, if they exist, who somehow can build a good learning relationship with their students. Especially when they are told to measure them more often than nurture them.
All jobs have their challenges, public or private sector alike. It is unrealistic to declare that teachers have 13 weeks holiday, the implication being that everybody else has none. All teacher breaks wrap up all the public holidays...what's that, about two working weeks? In the private sector I reckon people get about four or five weeks holiday on top of the public holidays, if I'm right then teachers get about five weeks more than most.
If the teachers are ones with integrity, and not the ones that doss, then those extra five weeks, or their equivalent, are easily taken up with work that has to be done outside the classroom. I reckon they have every right to fight their corner.
I was at Sainsbury's Lee last Sunday. The minimum wage worker on the till told me they were due a 20, yes Twenty, minute lunch break. Not in a canteen, but a room where they would have to suss their own food, clear up, and nip to the bog, in those 20 minutes. They would then go back to swiping £1500 of shopping through a till in an hour, while getting seven quid or so for doing so. Seeing as how the big supermarkets dominate grocery shopping now, none of us have much choice do we, shoppers or workers.
Michael Gove keeps on saying he wants to 'extend the school day', this is code for teachers working extra for nothing. The reality is many teachers do already do stuff with young people after the school day (probably the best part of the schools system we have), but Gove wants to make it compulsory work for teachers, with no extra pay I suppose.
Couldn't he start on the wonderful legal 'profession' first, and get them to work an extra 10 hours a week for free?
I hate empty clichés that try to stereotype a profession or group. Absolutely disagree with that as teaching a child that can't understand something is rewarding and incredibly challenging.
Don't get the "you chose the job" comments. Surely you're making the point for the teachers, they chose a job and now the goal posts are being moved.
A lot of strikes strikes p**s me off but doesn't make them wrong, god knows where we'd be if we just rolled over and took every government idea on the chin.
Finally, if you're not sure who to support over this, they're up against Michael Gove.
I think the "Those that can do, those that can't teach" is quite accurate if applied in the right context. I have worked with many people that couldn't do the job well so they transferred into the 'training' team to teach others to do the job they couldn't do themselves.
If you apply that to teachers does it mean that they are teaching children because they are not good at being children themselves? I don't think this is something they should be worried about.
As for working hours. My son's school has a dedicated car park for teachers and there are no cars in the car park after 4pm nor in the holidays.
I am semi-retired so I can take all the school holidays off so I am not jealous of them but bearing in mind how much they get, the pay (which is far from minimum wage) and the pension (even with the changes it is much, much more than the majority of people get) I would choose to be a teacher if I was 17 or 18 now.
Clearly we need to modernise the education to compete with the rest of the world. Technology has made many aspects of teaching redundant and, for what ever reason, there are vast differences in what some children get out of education. No one likes change, but it is inevitable.
As for the pensions, my understanding is that for a whole host of reasons there is not enough money being paid into the pension fund to pay out what the teachers get. Thus they need to work longer and/or pay more in and/or have smaller pensions. I know it is not, really, relevant as the teachers thought they were getting more than they will now get, but we are all in that boat and the only way teachers (who already get much better pension provision than most) can keep it is if the tax payer pays for it, which seems rather unfair - especially as the main reason for the shortfall is that teachers, like the rest of us, are all living much, much longer.
Incidentally, I'm not suggesting that all trainers can't do the job they teach, just that those that can't do the job often get on well in the training department.
Awww..go and sit on the naughty step if you're going to be grumpy! ;-)
FFS THE PAIR OF YOU! Have you not read what I put shortly afterwards? That saying always comes out when teaching is discussed, as I said I just wanted to be first, as a bloody joke! To beat the idiots who always say it. My wife's a teacher for goodness sake. Read before you accuse.
As for the pensions, my understanding is that for a whole host of reasons there is not enough money being paid into the pension fund to pay out what the teachers get. Thus they need to work longer and/or pay more in and/or have smaller pensions. I know it is not, really, relevant as the teachers thought they were getting more than they will now get, but we are all in that boat and the only way teachers (who already get much better pension provision than most) can keep it is if the tax payer pays for it, which seems rather unfair - especially as the main reason for the shortfall is that teachers, like the rest of us, are all living much, much longer.
The teachers pension scheme started in the 1920's I believe. If all the pension contributions of teachers had always been deposited at the base rate of interest, and the pay outs happened as they have been, there would apparently be enough money sloshing around in the teachers pensions scheme to pay off the national debt. A series of governments, acting like a troop of Robert Maxwells, have used the scheme to pay for any and everything, just as Road tax is used the same way.
I know that was then, and this is now, but the truth is that teachers pensions have been used to pay for stuff that would otherwise have been paid for by the tax payer. It has always been a revenue stream. The teachers pension scheme is not a private pension set up like Scottish Widows where a huge pot of dosh has been built up along the way, it has been a free pot of money for the taxpayers, in the guise of governments, to spend.
Said it before, teaching is no more a 'profession' than a supermarket worker, a road sweeper, a plumber, a doctor or any other paid worker.
In relation to teachers, 'professional' is a word slung around to either provoke guilt, or get them to work for nothing.
Try asking a solicitor who charges £20 to view each email to work for nothing. Try asking my dentist, who works two days per week max, to sort out a crown for nothing.
Teachers are not professionals, they are (usually) adults paid money to use their time, and expertise (such as it is), to intervene in the lives of young people. Unless those young people are home tutored, by parents possibly, then they are in school with no choice according to the law.
So, you have to send your kids to school, you have to dress them however the school says, you have to keep sending them in or risk financial or other penalties, you have to allow Goves penalties, and others, to be visited upon those kids.
In that context, a poor system where most schools worry more about a visit from the Ofstapo than care about the young people, most teachers, stripped of autonomy, decent working conditions (buckets under holes in roofs for example) and public respect, are only supposed to get x number through y exams and they must score well.
Not the best example of an 'educational' system. Schooling yes, socialising to conform yes, but education? I doubt it.
The teachers are by and large quite heroic trying to cope with the system. When surveyed, the people who matter most, students, rate teachers on a par with parents for those they respect and trust.
Obviously the wider public don't feel the same way, neither it seems does Michael Gove, but credit those teachers, if they exist, who somehow can build a good learning relationship with their students. Especially when they are told to measure them more often than nurture them.
All jobs have their challenges, public or private sector alike. It is unrealistic to declare that teachers have 13 weeks holiday, the implication being that everybody else has none. All teacher breaks wrap up all the public holidays...what's that, about two working weeks? In the private sector I reckon people get about four or five weeks holiday on top of the public holidays, if I'm right then teachers get about five weeks more than most.
If the teachers are ones with integrity, and not the ones that doss, then those extra five weeks, or their equivalent, are easily taken up with work that has to be done outside the classroom. I reckon they have every right to fight their corner.
I was at Sainsbury's Lee last Sunday. The minimum wage worker on the till told me they were due a 20, yes Twenty, minute lunch break. Not in a canteen, but a room where they would have to suss their own food, clear up, and nip to the bog, in those 20 minutes. They would then go back to swiping £1500 of shopping through a till in an hour, while getting seven quid or so for doing so. Seeing as how the big supermarkets dominate grocery shopping now, none of us have much choice do we, shoppers or workers.
Michael Gove keeps on saying he wants to 'extend the school day', this is code for teachers working extra for nothing. The reality is many teachers do already do stuff with young people after the school day (probably the best part of the schools system we have), but Gove wants to make it compulsory work for teachers, with no extra pay I suppose.
Couldn't he start on the wonderful legal 'profession' first, and get them to work an extra 10 hours a week for free?
I am not a teacher but my wife is a primary school teacher. I don't intend to argue about the rights or wrongs of strike action but I do feel that I should correct some of the more foolish statements on this thread.
1) "Teachers finish work at 4pm." They do not! Classroom time may well finish at 4pm but there are department meetings, staff meetings parent meetings, planning times,professional development, sports and other clubs to run. My wife as a not untypical example, she gets to school at 8.15am at the latest, sets up her class for the day, spends a maximum of ten minutes in the staffroom at lunchtime making a cup of tea before running a sports club on two lunchtimes, an arts club on another lunchtime and a comic making club another lunchtime. She keeps the final lunchtime free to work in her capacity as the technology coordinator to ensure that the school has all the resources it needs to teach that topic during the coming week. She also mentors student teachers and she uses this time to meet with them and discuss their progress.She never leaves her school before 5.15 at the earliest and usually nearer 6pm. After tea and a bath she will work doing planning or marking until about 9.30pm when we will settle down to watch something on the telly. Today is an exception as she is doing some training at another school after teaching which means she won't be in until about 7pm. We have an agreement that she won't do any further work tonight as it is our anniversary and we are going out for a meal. She will probably spend longer marking tomorrow to make up the time. At weekends she will work a minimum of eight hours doing further marking etc. Friday night her school is having a Valentine's disco for the kids and my wife is helping out which means she won't be in until 9.30 to 10 at the earliest.
Each term there are parents evenings. Typically these will take place on two or three evenings in a given week and will go on to about 8.30pm.
At report time she will usually spend upwards of 20 hours over two weekends completing the reports.
In all the time that she has been a teacher I have never known her work less than a 55hour week during term time and usually much more. To say that teachers finish work at 4pm with the implication that they work easy hours is plain stupid.
2) Teachers have 13 weeks holiday a year. No they don't! The the kids are off school but that doesn't mean that teachers totally down tools at the same time. The schools remain open for staff during most of the holiday time and most teachers will go into school at some times during the holidays. I kow that my wife plans to go into school at least twice during half term next week. In addition most teacers will use the holiday time to plan lessons, my wife is a primary school teacher which means that she could be teaching 5 year olds one year and 11 year olds the next. As the curriculum changes so frequently she has to make sure she is up to date with the latest developments. She will usuallu meet with the other teachers in her yeargroup in order to ensure that they co-ordinate their teaching. Even allowing for that the leave is quite generous but worth about half of the 13 weeks.
There are bad and lazy teachers as there are bad workers in every trade or profession, most of them get found out sooner or later. My wife works bloody hard and is not paticularly well paid. I work a lot less and get paid more. She loves her job and takes pleasure from doing a job that she feels is socially neccessary and useful. That is her motivation as it is for most teachers.
Whether teachers should strike or not may be an argument worth having but to imply that the majority of teachers are overpaid, workshy, feckless and have it cushy is riduculous.
Thank you for doing my usual job on this site for me whenever discussions about any aspect of teachers or teaching rears its head.
Great post. Very accurate and gives those that are falling for Gove's demonisation of the profession an insight into the reality.
Comments
Would one like a medal?
1. It is not all teachers striking, currently it is just the NUT I think.
2. It is not actually for more money. It is over pensions (essentially objecting to being asked to pay more and get less) and an issue of performance related pay progression (which I disagree with the NUT over and has already been implemented at the school I was until recently a governor of).
3. They will be fined for striking by not getting paid that day.
As for hours, it staggers me that people still believe teachers turn up 5 mins before the kids and leave 5 minutes later. My wife is a SENCO at her school and left this morning at 7.30 and will not be home till about 5.30. Yes people work longer hours than that but the stress and difficulty of a job does not equate to number of hours worked. I myself work a 37.5 hour week and get way more time off than when I worked in the city but the job is many times more stressful than an IT career.
And most importantly, a lifetime membership to the jelly of the month club.
My wife is a SENCO and she puts in a hell of a lot of work. All the wives in our local friends set are teachers and again they work very long hours. I'm sure there are some who arrive as the bell goes in the morning and leave when the kids do and don't prepare their lessons and take dodgy sickies, in fact I know there are as my wife has told me. It's the same in all professions, you get good and bad.
Can't name another line of work outside of Doctors/Nurses and the Armed Forces that have a positive stereotype.
Any Governors' Committee with teachers as members had to meet between 9.00 am and 4pm. That effectively debarred anyone who worked for a living, unless they were self employed or employed in the public sector, from becoming a governor.
Yes legally you are entitled to reasonable time off to perform duties as a School Governor but that time is unpaid (therefore unaffordable for many) and in a small organisation, particularly at busy times, totally unrealistic.
Once a term there was Parents' "Evening" between 4pm and 6:30 or 7pm usually. Again attendance for anyone that worked some distance from home as most do in the area was problematic. I actually campaigned, as Parent elected Governor, to get them to extend Parents' Evenings until 8pm when complaints were made by the School staff about "parent apathy." It happened but it caused resentment amongst the teaching staff.
I decided not to stand for re-election at the end of my term as Parent Governor because I could not give the job the best of my ability because of the difficulties mentioned above.
Things may well have changed in the present day but I can only quote my experience.
I am not a teacher but my wife is a primary school teacher. I don't intend to argue about the rights or wrongs of strike action but I do feel that I should correct some of the more foolish statements on this thread.
1) "Teachers finish work at 4pm." They do not! Classroom time may well finish at 4pm but there are department meetings, staff meetings parent meetings, planning times,professional development, sports and other clubs to run. My wife as a not untypical example, she gets to school at 8.15am at the latest, sets up her class for the day, spends a maximum of ten minutes in the staffroom at lunchtime making a cup of tea before running a sports club on two lunchtimes, an arts club on another lunchtime and a comic making club another lunchtime. She keeps the final lunchtime free to work in her capacity as the technology coordinator to ensure that the school has all the resources it needs to teach that topic during the coming week. She also mentors student teachers and she uses this time to meet with them and discuss their progress.She never leaves her school before 5.15 at the earliest and usually nearer 6pm. After tea and a bath she will work doing planning or marking until about 9.30pm when we will settle down to watch something on the telly. Today is an exception as she is doing some training at another school after teaching which means she won't be in until about 7pm. We have an agreement that she won't do any further work tonight as it is our anniversary and we are going out for a meal. She will probably spend longer marking tomorrow to make up the time. At weekends she will work a minimum of eight hours doing further marking etc. Friday night her school is having a Valentine's disco for the kids and my wife is helping out which means she won't be in until 9.30 to 10 at the earliest.
Each term there are parents evenings. Typically these will take place on two or three evenings in a given week and will go on to about 8.30pm.
At report time she will usually spend upwards of 20 hours over two weekends completing the reports.
In all the time that she has been a teacher I have never known her work less than a 55hour week during term time and usually much more. To say that teachers finish work at 4pm with the implication that they work easy hours is plain stupid.
2) Teachers have 13 weeks holiday a year. No they don't! The the kids are off school but that doesn't mean that teachers totally down tools at the same time. The schools remain open for staff during most of the holiday time and most teachers will go into school at some times during the holidays. I kow that my wife plans to go into school at least twice during half term next week. In addition most teacers will use the holiday time to plan lessons, my wife is a primary school teacher which means that she could be teaching 5 year olds one year and 11 year olds the next. As the curriculum changes so frequently she has to make sure she is up to date with the latest developments. She will usuallu meet with the other teachers in her yeargroup in order to ensure that they co-ordinate their teaching. Even allowing for that the leave is quite generous but worth about half of the 13 weeks.
There are bad and lazy teachers as there are bad workers in every trade or profession, most of them get found out sooner or later. My wife works bloody hard and is not paticularly well paid. I work a lot less and get paid more. She loves her job and takes pleasure from doing a job that she feels is socially neccessary and useful. That is her motivation as it is for most teachers.
Whether teachers should strike or not may be an argument worth having but to imply that the majority of teachers are overpaid, workshy, feckless and have it cushy is riduculous.
In relation to teachers, 'professional' is a word slung around to either provoke guilt, or get them to work for nothing.
Try asking a solicitor who charges £20 to view each email to work for nothing. Try asking my dentist, who works two days per week max, to sort out a crown for nothing.
Teachers are not professionals, they are (usually) adults paid money to use their time, and expertise (such as it is), to intervene in the lives of young people. Unless those young people are home tutored, by parents possibly, then they are in school with no choice according to the law.
So, you have to send your kids to school, you have to dress them however the school says, you have to keep sending them in or risk financial or other penalties, you have to allow Goves penalties, and others, to be visited upon those kids.
In that context, a poor system where most schools worry more about a visit from the Ofstapo than care about the young people, most teachers, stripped of autonomy, decent working conditions (buckets under holes in roofs for example) and public respect, are only supposed to get x number through y exams and they must score well.
Not the best example of an 'educational' system. Schooling yes, socialising to conform yes, but education? I doubt it.
The teachers are by and large quite heroic trying to cope with the system. When surveyed, the people who matter most, students, rate teachers on a par with parents for those they respect and trust.
Obviously the wider public don't feel the same way, neither it seems does Michael Gove, but credit those teachers, if they exist, who somehow can build a good learning relationship with their students. Especially when they are told to measure them more often than nurture them.
All jobs have their challenges, public or private sector alike. It is unrealistic to declare that teachers have 13 weeks holiday, the implication being that everybody else has none. All teacher breaks wrap up all the public holidays...what's that, about two working weeks? In the private sector I reckon people get about four or five weeks holiday on top of the public holidays, if I'm right then teachers get about five weeks more than most.
If the teachers are ones with integrity, and not the ones that doss, then those extra five weeks, or their equivalent, are easily taken up with work that has to be done outside the classroom. I reckon they have every right to fight their corner.
I was at Sainsbury's Lee last Sunday. The minimum wage worker on the till told me they were due a 20, yes Twenty, minute lunch break. Not in a canteen, but a room where they would have to suss their own food, clear up, and nip to the bog, in those 20 minutes. They would then go back to swiping £1500 of shopping through a till in an hour, while getting seven quid or so for doing so. Seeing as how the big supermarkets dominate grocery shopping now, none of us have much choice do we, shoppers or workers.
Michael Gove keeps on saying he wants to 'extend the school day', this is code for teachers working extra for nothing. The reality is many teachers do already do stuff with young people after the school day (probably the best part of the schools system we have), but Gove wants to make it compulsory work for teachers, with no extra pay I suppose.
Couldn't he start on the wonderful legal 'profession' first, and get them to work an extra 10 hours a week for free?
Oh, that's right, they were taught how to.
Utterly stupid cliche.
;-)
A lot of strikes strikes p**s me off but doesn't make them wrong, god knows where we'd be if we just rolled over and took every government idea on the chin.
Finally, if you're not sure who to support over this, they're up against Michael Gove.
If you apply that to teachers does it mean that they are teaching children because they are not good at being children themselves? I don't think this is something they should be worried about.
As for working hours. My son's school has a dedicated car park for teachers and there are no cars in the car park after 4pm nor in the holidays.
I am semi-retired so I can take all the school holidays off so I am not jealous of them but bearing in mind how much they get, the pay (which is far from minimum wage) and the pension (even with the changes it is much, much more than the majority of people get) I would choose to be a teacher if I was 17 or 18 now.
Clearly we need to modernise the education to compete with the rest of the world. Technology has made many aspects of teaching redundant and, for what ever reason, there are vast differences in what some children get out of education. No one likes change, but it is inevitable.
As for the pensions, my understanding is that for a whole host of reasons there is not enough money being paid into the pension fund to pay out what the teachers get. Thus they need to work longer and/or pay more in and/or have smaller pensions. I know it is not, really, relevant as the teachers thought they were getting more than they will now get, but we are all in that boat and the only way teachers (who already get much better pension provision than most) can keep it is if the tax payer pays for it, which seems rather unfair - especially as the main reason for the shortfall is that teachers, like the rest of us, are all living much, much longer.
Have you not read what I put shortly afterwards? That saying always comes out when teaching is discussed, as I said I just wanted to be first, as a bloody joke! To beat the idiots who always say it.
My wife's a teacher for goodness sake.
Read before you accuse.
A series of governments, acting like a troop of Robert Maxwells, have used the scheme to pay for any and everything, just as Road tax is used the same way.
I know that was then, and this is now, but the truth is that teachers pensions have been used to pay for stuff that would otherwise have been paid for by the tax payer. It has always been a revenue stream. The teachers pension scheme is not a private pension set up like Scottish Widows where a huge pot of dosh has been built up along the way, it has been a free pot of money for the taxpayers, in the guise of governments, to spend.
Great post. Very accurate and gives those that are falling for Gove's demonisation of the profession an insight into the reality.
Some will choose to ignore it of course....