Ooh the irony...
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Term time Dad loses in the Supreme Court
- Thread starter nicko31
- Start date
Ooh the irony...
Kalimantan Gull
Well-known member
I am currently in Borneo with my two girls who I took out of school two weeks early as we needed to be here to renew work permits. The school were very understanding. But I'm making sure they're keeping up with their maths and reading while we're here, so much is online these days. They also got to go to the jungle and see orangutans and gibbons in the wild, although my youngest got a bit scared because the orangutan was 'looking at her'. 
It is done in non contact time. Inset days are done on non contact days. Next.
- Jan 3, 2012
- 16,597
Agreed - and the richer ones are more likely to be able to pay for - or quite possibly already paying for - private tuition. I think it is openly accepted by people in education around where we live that the "results" of the so-called best schools are bolstered by people paying for private tuition.
GT49er
Well-known member
Gosh, why didn't I think of that when I was struggling to make ends meet?
SeagullSarge
Active member
- Jul 8, 2012
- 230
I'm guessing as this is a criminal offence repeat offender could end up in court?
beorhthelm
A. Virgo, Football Genius
- Jul 21, 2003
- 35,315
yes, though why are those specific non-contact days always scheduled for weeks inside the "term time"? why Friday 31st March when could have been scheduled for 3rd April?
You know why and I am tired of explaining it. All companies and businesses do training days on work days, not in personal holidays. Why would teaching be any different.
Lower West Stander
Well-known member
I haven't read the whole thread, but I think its the potential parental discipline issue that's the problem here.
My kids are now 18 and 20 and I never took them out of school for holidays. This wasn't even a financial thing, it was more to do with making them understand the importance of school and the fact that what they learn at school is importance to what they achieve in later life. I just couldn't accept that going on holiday to Florida is a more beneficial way of spending their time than being in school. And if you do it once, the habit will grow, it will be done again and again. This rubs off on the kids to the point where education becomes of secondary importance.
I totally accept you cannot tar all parents with the same brush and one offs will always happen. But where would you draw the line?
On the subject of this guy from the IoW, I think he's a troublemaker who just wants to make a name for himself. His daughter had a 90% attendance record before this all kicked off. That's a day off every 2 weeks. Is that really acceptable?
My kids are now 18 and 20 and I never took them out of school for holidays. This wasn't even a financial thing, it was more to do with making them understand the importance of school and the fact that what they learn at school is importance to what they achieve in later life. I just couldn't accept that going on holiday to Florida is a more beneficial way of spending their time than being in school. And if you do it once, the habit will grow, it will be done again and again. This rubs off on the kids to the point where education becomes of secondary importance.
I totally accept you cannot tar all parents with the same brush and one offs will always happen. But where would you draw the line?
On the subject of this guy from the IoW, I think he's a troublemaker who just wants to make a name for himself. His daughter had a 90% attendance record before this all kicked off. That's a day off every 2 weeks. Is that really acceptable?
Thunder Bolt
Silly old bat
He hasn't instigated any of the court proceedings. That has come from the Isle of Wight.
A lot of parents cannot get time off during the school holidays, so you end up with no family holidays at all.
The kids then get farmed out to relatives to be looked after during school holidays.
beorhthelm
A. Virgo, Football Genius
- Jul 21, 2003
- 35,315
now im confused, because you say "the other time is non contact time which is more flexible". im not asking why teachers should do training in their holiday, but why they cant do training in the non-contact time outside of term time. or will you concede that this is holiday, where they are not obligated to work? or will we go round in circles as you cant reconcile the claim of 40 days holiday with the official 195 contracted work days?
sussex_guy2k2
Well-known member
- Jun 6, 2014
- 3,747
You make a compelling argument.
sussex_guy2k2
Well-known member
- Jun 6, 2014
- 3,747
https://www.teachers.org.uk/files/Workload-A5-7037.pdf Page 7 answers your question in simple terms. Not that it has anything to do with the original post.
No. I will explain. You are assuming the term runs till Friday 31st and teachers are doing an inset day on the Friday. The term runs till Thursday 30th. The inset day is on the Friday on a non contact day. Why does the term run till Thursday? Because it matches the total number of days pro rata that a student needs to be educated. For most schools this is 195 days.
If you told all staff they had to be in on a certain day during non contact hours then that would not be flexible would it? That would be like a business saying you can work remotely or from home today but you also must be in the office for the day.
beorhthelm
A. Virgo, Football Genius
- Jul 21, 2003
- 35,315
to most people, if you told them their boss would not ask them to be in work for certain number of days, that they had no contractual obligation to do so, they'd call that holiday or days off (171 days that according to the link from sussex_guy2k2). you want to call it "flexible", to cover anything except training, and draw another odd analogy. i reckon you wont get the point, and as fun as this has been, i mean no ill so leave it there.
Iggle Piggle
Well-known member
- Sep 3, 2010
- 5,344
That's an Interesting read. Thankyou.
sussex_guy2k2
Well-known member
- Jun 6, 2014
- 3,747
You're right, in theory.
Unfortunately, the realities of teaching are incredibly different. I'll give you a breakdown of the average week I was doing in my final year of teaching as an example.
I was commuting up to London and had to get the 6am train at the latest to be at work on time. I'd say on average I probably worked about 90% of the time to work on the train, whether it was marking or creating lessons (I was lucky, in that I was one of the first on the train so usually got a seat). I'd get into work about 7.15, which was enough time to get a coffee and have a poo before a 7.35 start. I'd have my form for 20 minutes. Now, we had 6 one hour lessons a day, equating to 30 hours of potential contact time, of which it was obligated that the school gave us 3 hours per week to plan. I had a timetable of 25 hours, but my other two hours were timetabled in to cover lessons within my department, or others, without fail. Usually, because my department was incredibly stretched, I'd actually end up using the 3 spare hours to cover absences.
The long and the short of it is, that once I'd done two or three break time duties and lunch time duties a week, most days would then be absolutely packed through to 3.30 when school officially closed, which sounds great.
In reality, I had meetings every single day, including Fridays, and when I wasn't in meetings, I was helping out with the football team or taking the debating club.
I was also a GCSE and A-Level teacher. That meant that, because it was a high achieving school, I would usually then have an hour of catch up sessions/revision sessions/booster sessions, taking me through to 5.30pm. This again is totally fine by most peoples' standards right? I mean, most days I'd probably get a half an hour lunch break, possibly, if students weren't coming in for help that is.
In reality, what that means is that I'd then either have to take all of my planning or admin home. And I'm talking about the day to day planning and marking, not the curriculum stuff which regular teachers are increasingly asked to do. You see, as a regular teacher, in my four years, I introduced 4 separate A-Levels into schools, and 2 new GCSEs. For anyone that knows a teacher that's had to do this it's a killer of a job. It's basically the equivalent of asking you to do your job, and your manager's job, but giving you absolutely no time to do it.
So getting back to the day to day stuff... on some occasions I'd leave at half 5 and try to do some marking or planning. If I was lucky, or I already had resources, I may get half of it done by the time I was home. In reality, that very rarely happened. Most days I'd be up trying to get books marked, lessons planned, resources for new courses created, ridiculous admin tasks finalised etc etc until at least 8pm (and that's once I was efficient at my job). Now I hated working weekends, but the reality is a lot of the time it overlapped into weekends, just to try and minimise the amount of stuff I'd have to do mid week, meaning that not only was I working from 6am-ish until 8pm-ish, but I was then having to do more at the weekends to ensure I didn't fall behind.
I can imagine that what you're thinking is that I was inefficient at my job or simply not a great teacher. I was seen by Ofsted 6 times over a 4 year teaching career and I was never less than Good, but in 4 of the observations I was Outstanding. I worked in a school at the bottom of the rankings ladder (for the first three years) and one at the top of the rankings ladder in London (for the final year), and the pressure never changed, nor did the demands. I cared about my job and I cared about the education my pupils received, so I put an immense amount of time in until I said enough was enough. And I want to sit here and say it was only me that did it, but it simply wasn't, not even in the poorer ranked school - if anything, in that school people worked even harder as they were constantly trying to turn things around.
Which brings me nicely around to your point. I posted that link to show what teachers' official hours are. Officially they only have to do 195 days of work a year (including training). And I'm sure there are some that do that. But I never met one. And the reason I never met one is because it's simply not possible to finish a teacher's workload in the allocated 195 days, because usually that time is totally full before all the extra stuff that needs doing is even considered.
What that means, as Wilko has been trying to explain throughout, is that the remaining 170 days are, strictly speaking holiday. And that sounds great to anyone that isn't a teacher or to anyone that hasn't been a teacher. But in reality, those 170 days are very rarely holiday. More often than not, they are spent at work, coming up with or planning new lesson or a new curriculum, or doing the admin you've spent weeks putting off, or marking the books you've not been able to mark for two weeks, or doing summer school, or revision sessions, or any number of things that teachers do in their holidays.
Just as a final point, during four years of teaching, I had one holiday skiing. The reason being was that a) I couldn't afford to go on holiday on a teacher's salary during the school holidays whilst also taking my family and b) I had far too much to do throughout the holidays. Teaching isn't just a job, it's a lifestyle. Unfortunately for this country, it's a lifestyle and a profession which gets so much stick and is forcing teachers to leave the profession in droves, and they will continue to leave to the detriment of the education of our future generations until something changes. However, nothing is going to change until people begin to get over this idea that teachers do nothing but take holidays and work 9-3, and until they start to actually take the teaching profession and education seriously.
Maybe you need to go back to school with your scraming.
jonny.rainbow
Well-known member
- Oct 29, 2005
- 6,610
The difference between plurals and possessive apostrophes perhaps?
daveybgtt
New member
I am....defeated, I will hang up my mouse and turn in my e-cred card. Forums superstar jonnyDOTrainbow has owned me on the internet, there is no coming back from this.
Fare thee well NSC.