It May Be The Holidays...

It may be the holidays but not all teachers are sunning themselves on a beach in the Caribbean you know. What with the recent announcement that I'm going to have to find an extra £400 per year for my "fantastic" pension (the reason it's "fantastic" Mr Gove/Osbourne is because we don't get paid as much as the private sector workers and don't receive any bonuses, you muppet(s)).

In fact I'm actually working for a couple of days each week on quite an exciting project to do with learning via the internet and children in remote parts of the world. It has legs and I'm being paid very well for it, although I would like to point out, not the hourly rate of £30ish per hour that the unions suggest we get paid, but I'm grateful, not only for the cash but also for the opportunity to be part of something that I believe could be truly revolutionary in the world of education across the planet. I can't say too much at this point (dear oh dear, I sound like a poor man's James Bond), but if it gets off the ground, and the signs are good, I will no doubt bore the pants off you all about it.

I would like to say that it's really nice to be working with people who actually value my opinion (and I have a few gems amid the piles of rubbish I throw out on a daily basis) as opposed to being told by certain members of my leadership team and Ofsted that I'm essentially worthless on a regular basis. Please, put those small violins away, I don't want sympathy, I'm just making the point that perhaps your staff, Mr/Ms Headteacher, would be more productive and open to your ludicrous ideas about pushing the school "forward", if you actually praised them on occasions when you didn't actually want something from them in order to give you more leverage when you go for your next, better paid job. Just a thought.

Anyway, I digress.

It's funny but the first thing you hear from people when  they talk about teaching is "great holidays". What people don't often realise that a teacher's day doesn't begin at 9am and end at 3.30pm, and the 13 weeks (yes, I know it's a lot) holiday isn't always spent on a sunbed with the latest Jilly Cooper novel, or whatever may float your particular boat.

When I first startedteaching all those moons ago, I spent most of my holidays labouring on a building site of a friend of mine. The money I was paid was essentially what I got for being a teacher - so it was "double bubble" for those weeks. The great thing with the labouring was that I didn't have to do anything outside of my working hours, I'd just turn up, break stuff up/wheelbarrow/shovel stuff, and go home. Plenty of tiredness but no stress. I'm not saying that all teachers should give up teaching and become labourers, but I'm just trying to convey the fact that teaching is not just about your contracted hours - 13 weeks holiday is often not 13 weeks holiday.

Unless you're the headteacher, when you can actually afford to pay for holidays offered by travel agents during school holiday time, and you can just tell your 100 or whatever staff to essentially do your job for you.

Who's the mug?

Summer Holiday!

It's finally here - six weeks off! It couldn't have come quick enough.

Now what to do?
Holiday? How much?!
Shopping? It's very busy!
Sit at home and look after the kids? Probably!

Don't let any teacher tell you that the best thing about being a teacher is making a difference to all those lovely children in their classrooms. They are lying to you. Holidays is what it's all about, and I'm not too shy to say that 13 weeks per year is very good compared to most peoples' 4 or 5 weeks per year.

There are downsides though:

1. The travel companies kindly bump up all their prices making it almost impossible to actually go anywhere. They don't even offer last minute jobs. The price is often prohibitive if you are paying for more than just yourself - and that isn't a moan about teachers' wages, it's a moan about the legality of the holiday companies' policy of increasing prices hugely.
2. All the kids are off too. This may sound an obvious point, but everywhere is busy and more often than not worth avoiding as a result, unless you particularly enjoying queuing that is.
3. If you have kids, you have to look after them or pay for them to go on some kind of activity scheme, which are often charged at an extortionate rate.
4. You therefore end up having very little holiday at all, unless watching Nick Junior can be classed as a holiday activity.

I'm not moaning really (well, perhaps just a little bit) but even though teachers get a lot of holiday, I think they do deserve it (I'm biased, I know) purely because they have to suffer it with all the human beings they are holidaying from. Not to mention the fact that teaching is actually quite knackering and the fact that there would be very few teachers at all if the volume of holiday on offer was shorter.

I, for one, would not touch the profession with a barge-pole if it weren't for the time off!

Holiday Revision

As a teacher you are constantly banging on about the importance of steady revision over the holiday period to your charges. Most, as we all know, will ignore your advice and try and cram in a little revision on the morning of the exam. Waste of time - you might as well do yourself a fry up instead.

Then there's the revision sessions put on by the schools. It is an expectation that teachers will stay after school on one day per week and do an extra lesson - unpaid. You obviously not obliged, but it is severely frowned upon if you don't do it. I don't mind being frowned upon, but plenty do.

There's also the revision sessions put on during the holidays - Easter and Summer Half Term. These do tend to be paid as they are during holiday time, and I tend to do those as I'm being paid for my time. And let's face it, you don't get much (if anything) for free nowadays.

The way we tend to run our revision sessions is to "invite" a select band of students along - they are the ones who have target grades that are now well beyond them due to their inability to actually try in class. Letters are sent home and reply slips grudgingly brought back in by disgruntles students whose delusional parents still believe that little Johnny is going to be a top draw lawyer, or a Premier League footballer needing an education to fall back on in case he gets a career threatening injury.

Inevitably the sessions are pretty pointless, with the students just there because they know that their games console will be confiscated if they not. They have also come to the realisation that even a pass is probably beyond them, let alone their target grade of A* (which the majority seem to have now). I had one member of my class try to persuade me to move them from higher tier (which they were perfectly capable of doing) to foundation tier, where the highest they can get is a C grade. This is less than a week before the exam. I refused for the following reasons:

1. It costs the school an extra £25 that it can't really afford, not that that's a major issue.
2. Ultimately they have been idle, and when offered help refused it with the comment "My mum's tutoring me". They even went on holiday over the last revision session they were invited to attend.
3. They did in class (i.e. with help) a foundation paper and totally messed it up by making silly mistakes due to not concentrating. Since you need to get around 70% to 80% for a C on the foundation paper, that doesn't leave much scope for silly mistakes. The higher tier will allow them to make silly mistakes because you can get a C grade with around 35% (yes, you did read that correctly).
4. Why should I rush around making a massive effort to change their tier of entry when they have made absolutely no effort whatsoever in 2 years? Get used to reaping what you sow pal!

Each revision day costs a school around £350 per subject, which includes printing the letters, posting letters home, and then paying two members of a department to be there for 5 hours or so. After the latest waste of my life, I said that it was pointless to my colleague and they replied with this:

"We have to do these sessions because it ticks another box, and when they all fail and try to blame us, we can just say that we offered these revision sessions." Sad, but true and wisely said.