Teachers and workloads

pillars of hercules said:
Is the workload shocking when spread out over the year, or is it just condensed into too small a space?

Teaching time works out as around 24 hours per week excluding not contact work. Maybe kids get too much time off?
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:lol:

Give me 9-5 and I leave everything that is not completed that day till the next day.

The school system would implode.

We have advertised for a teacher in my department for over a year and a half. Had three applicants who I wouldn’t even bother interviewing based on their application forms.
 


Lots of people moan and gripe about their shit jobs, in all walks of life, and some of it surely is genuine. But when the desertion rate continually rises, you know they are not bluffing. But anyone who wants to work with kids must surely be missing a sanity certificate.
 
pillars of hercules said:
Is the workload shocking when spread out over the year, or is it just condensed into too small a space?

Teaching time works out as around 24 hours per week excluding not contact work. Maybe kids get too much time off?
Click to expand...

Thankfully those 24 teaching hours plan themselves, create and print their own resources and mark the work produced from them otherwise teachers would be absolutely knackered I reckon....

The kids need the time off. They’re kids like. By the end of a week, behaviour tends to be noticeably worse than at the start. They get tired and their productivity wanes. By the end of a term, they absolutely need a break.
 
ivanthereasonable said:
Lots of people moan and gripe about their shit jobs, in all walks of life, and some of it surely is genuine. But when the desertion rate continually rises, you know they are not bluffing. But anyone who wants to work with kids must surely be missing a sanity certificate.
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If I was to write a list of my gripes with the job, the kids themselves would be somewhere right down the bottom. And therein lies the problem with the profession.
 
pillars of hercules said:
Is the workload shocking when spread out over the year, or is it just condensed into too small a space?

Teaching time works out as around 24 hours per week excluding not contact work. Maybe kids get too much time off?
Click to expand...
Technically, I could spend about 3 hours a night marking stuff. But fuck that: pay us more and respect us more and the. I’ll put more of my effort in.
 
pillars of hercules said:
Is the workload shocking when spread out over the year, or is it just condensed into too small a space?

Teaching time works out as around 24 hours per week excluding not contact work. Maybe kids get too much time off?
Click to expand...

Yeah probably partly down to the condensed nature of the work. It's lesson prep and marking that causes the problems in the main.
 
Some Kids and parents think they know better than teachers.
Some Kids think they can get away with playing up because teachers have limited disciplinary tactics.
Some parents don't back up teachers
Some parents don't discipline their kids at all and leave it to school to do it

The list goes on...
 
The Sheepfolds End said:
The government have got it completely wrong with regards to recruitment for starters. They’re offering insane bursaries to train, with some subjects handing out between 25-30k tax free, with virtually no legal obligations to repay if you either don’t go into the profession or leave shortly after. Naturally it’s seen as easy money by some recent graduates, and they can take the year, save the cash and do something else if they wish to do so. I know fine well some universities (Russell Group might I add) are also accepting graduates with very loosely related degrees onto PGCE courses so some don’t even have a passion for the subject they’re teaching (sociology grads doing geography - hello 25k bursary!).

All this means is that a lot, not all of course as there are some excellent N and RQTs, of people go into the career half hearted and with a fairly non committal attitude to the career. And when the workload is tough (heavy focus on assessment, Ofsted, progress, and data) with challenges either in the classroom or with demanding senior management and / or parents, then it’s very appealing to choose a different career path.

More has to be done to make the profession more attractive to stay in long term rather that just train.



What do you mean by transparent and how would you go about making it more transparent out of interest?
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I'll be honest and say I haven't given it a massive amount of thought but teachers have to do 1265 hours of directed time per year which works out roughly 24 hours per week.

Surely the hours they actually work can be calculated and logged to show the time they spend doing out of 'directed' hours work.

The way teacher's go on about the hours suggests a newly qualified teacher on £23,000 pa is getting less than minimum wage?

mcq10 said:
I’ve done two training courses last week in my so called holidays.

My school went on strike last year, workload issues being one of them along with failure to tackle the shit behaviour. Things are the worst I’ve known in my 14 years of teaching.
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I can well imagine. I've got family and mates that have left teaching to do less stressful, easier and better paid work. One has become a hgv driver because it's better money :confused:
 
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The Cookie Monster said:
Yeah probably partly down to the condensed nature of the work. It's lesson prep and marking that causes the problems in the main.
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Chuck in parents evenings (which to be effective also need prep by the way), report writing, CPD, data entry (relentless) etc and it’s a heavy workload. And doing all that after standing up in front of 30+ kids, managing the differing levels of abilities, behaviours and attention spans for 5 hours, performing to try and stoke their interest, makes it a tiring and fairly pressured job (without brilliant financial reward).

All jobs have their strains, undoubtedly. I’ve worked in a few before this one. I also chose this profession so I can’t complain about it too much. But I genuinely can’t believe that people still have this notion that teachers rock up at 8.45, go home at 3.30, stick their feet up when they get in and start planning how to spend all their leisure time for the holidays in winter, spring and summer.
 
mcq10 said:
:lol:

Give me 9-5 and I leave everything that is not completed that day till the next day.

The school system would implode.

We have advertised for a teacher in my department for over a year and a half. Had three applicants who I wouldn’t even bother interviewing based on their application forms.
Click to expand...
My point is it's not possible to do your job the way it is in a productive manner. I'm not disrespecting teachers here, I'm saying too much is being crammed into too small a space.

What if kids only had 4 instead of 6 weeks off in the summer and the curriculum was spread out more? Teachers workloads could be spread out more evenly and pressure on them reduced.
 
The Sheepfolds End said:
Chuck in parents evenings (which to be effective also need prep by the way), report writing, CPD, data entry (relentless) etc and it’s a heavy workload. And doing all that after standing up in front of 30+ kids, managing the differing levels of abilities, behaviours and attention spans for 5 hours, performing to try and stoke their interest, makes it a tiring and fairly pressured job (without brilliant financial reward).

All jobs have their strains, undoubtedly. I’ve worked in a few before this one. I also chose this profession so I can’t complain about it too much. But I genuinely can’t believe that people still have this notion that teachers rock up at 8.45, go home at 3.30, stick their feet up when they get in and start planning how to spend all their leisure time for the holidays in winter, spring and summer.
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Those who don't agree with this post should wonder why, if it''s such an easy life, why does the country have such a serious problem with the recruitment of teachers and and an even greater problem with their retention. And no I'm not a teacher
 
pillars of hercules said:
I'll be honest and say I haven't given it a massive amount of thought but teachers have to do 1265 hours of directed time per year which works out roughly 24 hours per week.

Surely the hours they actually work can be calculated and logged to show the time they spend doing out of 'directed' hours work.

The way teacher's go on about the hours suggests a newly qualified teacher on £23,000 pa is getting less than minimum wage?


I can well imagine. I've got family and mates that have left teaching to do less stressful, easier and better paid work. One has become a hgv driver because it's better money :confused:
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Teachers have their results scrutinised, their marking scrutinised, their lessons observed, kids parents’ scrutinise, Ofsted scrutinise. The list goes on! Teachers are probably under more scrutiny than the vast majority of professions. If I had another layer of bureaucracy added to my job for scrutiny purposes where I had to type in a timesheet what I was doing, when I was doing it and why I was doing it, I’d have even less time to do the things I should be doing instead. And if I thought I was doing that just to convince Joe Public that actually we are quite busy then I’d probably start looking for alternative careers as well.

Also, NQTs probably do earn a wage that is equivalent to or less than minimum wage.
 
pillars of hercules said:
My point is it's not possible to do your job the way it is in a productive manner. I'm not disrespecting teachers here, I'm saying too much is being crammed into too small a space.

What if kids only had 4 instead of 6 weeks off in the summer and the curriculum was spread out more? Teachers workloads could be spread out more evenly and pressure on them reduced.
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How are you going to fund the additional two weeks worth of wages for teachers?

Teachers are paid for 195 days plus statutory holidays. This is averaged out into 12 monthly payments for ease of administration. A hell of a lot of goodwill goes into teaching that a lot parents don’t appreciate.
 

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