Inset Days

Dave · 19 Mar 2011 at 10:33

meghatronic said:
I have ZERO idea why kids get 6-7 weeks off in summer. Back in my day.... D)

At my school in France I used to get 12 weeks off for summer holidays

(although I did start at 8 and finish at 5/6!)

sigma · 19 Mar 2011 at 10:33

OCdude said:
They should put inset days between print screen days and delete days.

HO HO HO.

I'm done.

What about the incest days?

RomanNose · 19 Mar 2011 at 10:34

Castiel said:
Low Salary?

Pull the other one. Teachers earn above average salaries and in many cases far far more.

With actual teaching days being on average 193 days, take away 104 weekend days and 28 days holiday entitlement. That still leaves 40 days or 8 working weeks to mark, prepare, have the 5 inset days and any other stuff teachers can invent to justify their extraordinary holiday entitlements.

I just looked you are right, I just always assumed that it was low because that is what I have always heard. Silly me.

Participant · 19 Mar 2011 at 10:36

Castiel said:
What rubbish, the cost would be negligible if anything at all.

What 'extra' costs are there in having inset days during the holiday periods?

meghatronic said:
What?

Their salary shouldn't increase, they earn a lot more than people think.

How very naive you both must be if you think you can add 20% to people's working hours without increasing their pay.

Secretarial, bursary, caretaker, admin staff all willing to cut their holidays in half for no extra money. Please be sensible.

Tom0 · 19 Mar 2011 at 10:38

Teachers must have a fantastic union.

Castiel · 19 Mar 2011 at 10:42

Robbie G said:
How very naive you both must be if you think you can add 20% to people's working hours without increasing their pay.

Secretarial, bursary, caretaker, admin staff all willing to cut their holidays in half for no extra money. Please be sensible.

That is the great thing about salaries and the contractual requirements inherent in them.

You only need give 90 days notice of a change in T&C's and the employee has the option of accepting them or finding alternative employment.

The fact is also that many of the support workers like Secretarial, Caretakers and admin staff DO NOT receive more than the statutory holiday entitlement, and either return to work (caretakers) or simply do not get paid.

There is no reason to increase salaries, you simply need to readdress working practice to make it more efficient and cost effective.

Raymond Lin · 19 Mar 2011 at 10:45

Castiel said:
If teachers has the same 5.6 week entitlement as the vast majority of other employees then there would be ample time for the 5 inset days to be taken during the school holidays.

The argument of prep and marking falls short simply on the fact that the actual school day for actual teaching is quite short compared to most professions and even with the inset days there is still ample time within the proscribed holiday periods/non teaching time to allow for normal holiday entitlement and the preparation.

The fact of the matter is that teachers gets a stupid amount of time off work compare to other professions. 6/7 weeks in the summer, 4 weeks in the winter and 2 weeks in the spring with 2 half term weeks? Add to the fact of they only teach 6 hours a day, and that's if they teach every single period. You can argue about that they do work outside lessons, mark papers at home. Boo hoo, lots of other professions do that. Solicitor go into to the office on the weekend to prep cases and to catch up if the work load is high. A partner at work often from 8 to 8 daily and doesn't take a lunch hour. He works onn the train and I the bath and one time even in bed! We know because he dictates his letters and you can hear the water in water background. A court deadline is that, deadline. A lot of the people I work with Take work home or stay at the office until 8pm, no overtime! Tell that to the teachers and the union will have a fit I bet.

I wonder what is the real number of hours a teacher actually work a week.

Nitefly · 19 Mar 2011 at 10:46

As a kid I always thought it was an insect day. I was really upset I couldn't go

Raymond Lin · 19 Mar 2011 at 10:49

Nitefly said:
As a kid I always thought it was an insect day. I was really upset I couldn't go

You freak lol

Participant · 19 Mar 2011 at 10:57

Castiel said:
That is the great thing about salaries and the contractual requirements inherent in them.

You only need give 90 days notice of a change in T&C's and the employee has the option of accepting them or finding alternative employment.

Thank you for reading from your employment text book. However could you please explain the practical implications for the country of changing the terms and conditions of thousands of teachers so dramatically?

Regarding support staff you first say it wouldn't cost anything, then admit that some support staff are paid piecemeal...so, it would cost more to drag them in during the hols, then? Unless you'd still pay them the same, in which case how utterly ridiculous to think that school caretakers wouldn't just leave in their droves if someone told them they would be paid far worse than someone in another sector that works the same hours.

Likewise making qualified teachers work private sector hours for the same pay...what you get is nobody training as a teacher. Great Castiel, that will really help our kids. Brilliant.

vicisthebest · 19 Mar 2011 at 10:58

Raymond Lin said:
You can argue about that they do work outside lessons, mark papers at home. Boo hoo, lots of other professions do that. Solicitor go into to the office on the weekend to prep cases and to catch up if the work load is high. A partner at work often from 8 to 8 daily and doesn't take a lunch hour. He works onn the train and I the bath and one time even in bed! We know because he dictates his letters and you can hear the water in water background. A court deadline is that, deadline. A lot of the people I work with Take work home or stay at the office until 8pm, no overtime! Tell that to the teachers and the union will have a fit I bet.

I wonder what is the real number of hours a teacher actually work a week.

I am a primary school teacher. I get up at 6:30, am at work by 7:30. I leave usually by about 5:30 and often don't finish working till 10.

You're right, solicitors probably do work hard. But I bet they earn a lot more than my 23k a year.

If teaching was such a **** easy job then everyone would do it.

Tombstone · 19 Mar 2011 at 11:03

Robbie G said:
It's not just the teachers either. It's caretakers and other support staff you'd have to pay and persuade to come in on the last Friday of the hol.

Many schools will already be paying those people anyway, as at a lot of schools the caretakers and the support staff (specifically the IT support staff) work all through every holiday too already anyway.

Tombstone · 19 Mar 2011 at 11:10

Raymond Lin said:
I wonder what is the real number of hours a teacher actually work a week.

It varies a lot from teacher to teacher. I've worked in education for the past 3 decades and I've seen teachers who do the absolute minimum and I've seen teachers who are still working at 9pm and are in the school daily through most of the holidays too, though admittedly those ones tend to burn out very quickly and leave to do something else.

Westyfield2 · 19 Mar 2011 at 11:15

Because teachers like an extra days holiday. I've seen them in town on Inset Days before... must be training real hard then! They're soo underpaid and get soo little holiday as it is.

There is a good thing about them being on Mondays though, it means you can go away for a long weekend without the child missing any school. That's what we always did whenever there was an inset monday, go away on the friday after school and return monday evening.

Dolph said:
Because teaching suffers from monopolistic public sector spanish practices?

I love you Dolph :cool:

.

vicisthebest · 19 Mar 2011 at 11:21

Westyfield2 said:
Because teachers like an extra days holiday. I've seen them in town on Inset Days before... must be training real hard then!

These schools must have some slack headteachers!

Castiel · 19 Mar 2011 at 11:26

Robbie G said:
Thank you for reading from your employment text book. However could you please explain the practical implications for the country of changing the terms and conditions of thousands of teachers so dramatically?

Regarding support staff you first say it wouldn't cost anything, then admit that some support staff are paid piecemeal...so, it would cost more to drag them in during the hols, then? Unless you'd still pay them the same, in which case how utterly ridiculous to think that school caretakers wouldn't just leave in their droves if someone told them they would be paid far worse than someone in another sector that works the same hours.

Likewise making qualified teachers work private sector hours for the same pay...what you get is nobody training as a teacher. Great Castiel, that will really help our kids. Brilliant.

Lol.

The majority of those support staff are already at work anyway. School Caretakers for example, only get 2 weeks holiday during the summer closure, so that point is moot.

The only practical implication is that Children gain 5 days education and Teaching staff are more cost effective in their time management.

The days gained by the economy from parents not having to take days off would more than offset any ancillary cost of 5 days teacher training instead of 5 more days paying Teachers for doing nothing.

As for teaching assistants, admin, and so on, they are not necessary for inset days, so why bring them in.

What would help our kids is if they were not taken out of school simply to allow teachers 5 days extra holiday on top of the 12 weeks or so they already have.

The last time in 1998 the Govt tried to negotiate a reduction in the 13 week holiday entitlement by 5 weeks the Teaching Unions wanted a 50% pay increase.

Asking for the 5 inset days to be added to the end of a term is not onerous or unfair, in fact it is quite the opposite.

A think tank has suggested teachers should surrender one week's holiday a year.

The Centre for Scottish Public Policy said the move would minimise disruption to families caused by in-service training days and create potential cost savings.

Teachers are entitled to 13 weeks (65 days) holiday a year. The CSPP said that could be reduced so that teachers' five in-service days can be concentrated into a single week, at the end of the summer term.

The proposal may appeal to parents who struggle to find childcare for five days spread over the year and there could be a saving on the cost of the temporary staff who sometimes cover for teachers on courses.

Leaders of the EIS teaching union said staff already facing a pay freeze and a review of their employment conditions would be unhappy about the proposal.

How can any teacher seriously justify not allowing this, 12 weeks paid holiday is still way above what anyone else is entitled to.

Westyfield2 · 19 Mar 2011 at 11:39

vicisthebest said:
These schools must have some slack headteachers!

Do not get me started on the head there. Let's just say she's a completely useless waste of space. :mad:

With the intake it gets that school has great potential

. She makes an appearance once a year and uses it to plug her Zen-Buddhist cult.

A quote from someone when we were having our sixth form leaving photo taken (said person had joined the school for sixth form, so only been there two years).... The photographer had us all up on the stands but the head hadn't arrived yet so he told us "All stay where you are, we're just waiting for the head"... person points at the Assistant Head (who is a God) and genuinely says "Eh, Mr Rose is already here "... "No, he's not the head, Ms Lee is." we replied... "Who?" was their response.
I kid you not, they'd been in the school for two years and not seen or heard of the head once.

I know one of the inset days the teachers did have to attend though.... for Meditation :rolleyes:

.

Castiel · 19 Mar 2011 at 11:48

vicisthebest said:
I am a primary school teacher. I get up at 6:30, am at work by 7:30. I leave usually by about 5:30 and often don't finish working till 10.

You're right, solicitors probably do work hard. But I bet they earn a lot more than my 23k a year.

If teaching was such a **** easy job then everyone would do it.

Better time management seems to be something you need to look at. A good friend of mine works in a primary school as a teacher and she doesn't work anywhere near those hours. She also earns somewhat more than £23k.

vicisthebest · 19 Mar 2011 at 11:49

Castiel said:
Better time management seems to be something you need to look at. A good friend of mine works in a primary school as a teacher and she doesn't work anywhere near those hours. She also earns somewhat more than £23k.

I'm newly qualified. Having to make and plan everything from scratch means it goes with the territory, or seems to be for every NQT I know. Think it will be better next year when I can re-use some stuff from this year.

Also the reason for the low pay.

I'll be totally honest, the holidays are a real perk, but it's a difficult and very time intensive job during term-time. Lots of jobs come with perks - e.g. be in sales, banking, etc, and go out for lots of posh meals with clients while earning good commission/bonuses. There are good and bad points about all jobs. But like I said before, if it was such an easy job then everyone would be a teacher.

Castiel · 19 Mar 2011 at 11:51

vicisthebest said:
I'm newly qualified. Goes with the territory or seems to be for every NQT I know.

I suspect that is the same for anyone in any industry though, my friend has been a primary teacher for about 6 years or so iirc.

When I began my job I earn't far less and worked far more than I do now for example.

I don't begrude teachers their holiday exactly, only the 5 days extra for teaching. I fail to see why 12 weeks holiday and a weeks inset training at the end of the summer term is unfair or something that any teacher can really justify not agreeing with.

There are loads of teaching aids available both online and elsewhere to help you plan and construct lessons.