Truancy penalties - should they be tougher?

decades of experience, jessm, and i am the well-organised head of department. don't know about other schools but we still have duty - i have break, lunch, start and end of school, two days a week, plus on call two lessons. most people have a tutor group with pshee lessons needing contributions and teaching. academic mentoring of individual students and providing revision sessions, as well as fun activities in after school sessions - all part of the job. offering AS and A2 lessons as extras after school in our 11-16 school. all my department's courses are individualised so there is a lot of production of teaching materials, even if the photocopying is carried out by the print room staff. our materials are written at levels 2-3/4-5/6-7 (and often for basic english - pupils with very little spoken english who need pictures and a few words).

Oh, how well I remember lunchtime duty in the playground. We didn't wear trousers to work in the 1970's, but maxi skirts came in and I used to wear an ankle length thick skirt with thick tights underneath.
I made it my business to be very friendly with the school secretary so I got much of my duplicating done for me.
One of my big problems was getting other departments to understand that my classes needed worksheets pitched at their level but when I started part-time lecturing at my former teacher training college, I discovered that my two hour lecture was the only introduction to children with learning difficulties that they got in a three or four year course. I am sure things have improved very much since then.

Yup if you are a new teacher it is a lot tougher, unless your department head is well organised and has got lots of lesson materials organised on the intranet. But, unlike when *Greatnan" and I were teaching there are virtually no other compulsory duties e.g. I was obliged to give up on dinner hour a week to do supervision of dinner queues, supervise at break time etc.
And there were the joys of doing your own worksheet duplication using the dreaded reprographic machines of the time. All of this added up to quite a lot of additional work - and no computers to assist. And I don't recall any additional help from TAs - however struggling the learners were.
All teachers are required to do these days is teach, prepare and keep up to date.

lesson, 50 minutes. group of 28. planning, prep and marking - seven hours. add to that, the other 22 groups if you're a new teacher, 15 if you have other things to do as well...

I left teaching in 1979 - my last four years were as Head of a large remedial service and it was a lot less stressful than actually working at the coal face.
When I was a classroom teacher, Head of the Remedial Dept. and Head of Third Year, I had only eight free periods out of 40, so obviously I did a lot of marking, lesson plans, reports, staff meetings, etc. in my own time. (Most other teachers were reluctant to take any of my classes).
I know teachers get more free periods now, but I think the pressures on teachers is much greater, with constant interference from the government, endless forms to complete, targets to be met, and breakdown of discipline in some schools. I don't grudge them a decent salary and any other improvements in their working conditions. I don't know if things have changed, but I am pretty sure I paid 6% of my salary in pension contributions. My Civil Service pension was non-contributory, but the benefit was factored into our salary structure.
It would be good if workers in the private sector could be given some security but that would mean less profits for shareholders. I seem to remember that some large companies gave themselves 'pension holidays' and of course Maxwell simply stole pension funds - was he the only one?

Teachers in UK are supposed to have quite a bit of prep time within school hours these days. Not enough to do all prep and marking I am sure, but then the school day is only about 6 hours long.
I have taught secondary and know how tiring it can be. But I don't think it is more tiring than many other jobs that have far less leave. Teachers are fortunate in their hours, their leave and their pension scheme.

yes, greatnan, that had been my understanding of the japanese system, previously. however, it seems that the pressure is consistent - on pupils, teachers and families.

Doesn't Japan have a very high suicide rate? I believe children are 'coached' from the age of two to get them into the best nursery school and this hot-housing continues throughout their school life. There has to be a happy medium between such pressure and parental indifference.

I think the whole culture of conformism makes a difference in Japan too.

I think there is generally more respect for the education system and so less issues with behaviour in lessons ...and so also a more productive system

i don't know about the holidays. daughter has a friend living in japan, which is how i heard about the lessons.

Do Japanese teachers have the same amount of holidays? I don't think so, discipline in Japanese schools is paramount. The parents and teachers work very closely and like all aspects of Japanese life hard work and sense of national pride, including good education, is highly regarded.

What would happen if teachers were given the same holiday leave entitlements as the private sector? If the teaching profession had shall we say a generous 30 days plus bank holidays surely they would benefit by having a holiday without doing school preparations as the duties they say they carry out at home will be executed at their place of work.

someone told me japanese teachers only teach two lessons a day because they do all their prep etc in the workplace. the standard of teaching is very high and pupils give feedback on the quality of lessons. i'd be interested to know if japanese children behave badly in school.

two of my colleagues are currently working on the timetable for next year. it is incredibly complicated. they work most nights, some weekends, and call 11pm their 'stop' time. for all this to be carried out in the workplace would mean employing many more teachers. it would be a much healthier way to work, though.

I agree absolutely with your post in its entirety, POGS!

I t is very evident there is a difference of opinion between those in the teaching profession, either present or past, and those who are not. I have purposely not scribed for a while as I was interested in other opinions and felt I might have my mind changed. This has not happened so I reiterate my point made earlier. Truancy is to my mind slightly different to parents asking for permission to take a holiday, albeit marginal. Truancy must be stamped on as it is not acceptable, all I can say is good luck to those who are trying to do so.

My thought remains, is it not possible for either a zero tollerance by both teachers and parents to time off school, or an allowance of 5/10 days to be given with permission for children upto 10 years old. I fully accept children doing exams must not be taken away from their studies. I do not have a problem with either scheme but I do want a level playing field for all.

Teachers always say that whilst they have long holidays they are inevitably doing work for their teaching duties at home. What would happen if teachers were given the same holiday leave entitlements as the private sector? If the teaching profession had shall we say a generous 30 days plus bank holidays surely they would benefit by having a holiday without doing school preparations as the duties they say they carry out at home will be executed at their place of work.

bagitha made a perfectly valid point concerning taking children out of school for trips not requiring "catch up" lessons, not her words but mine. Teachers days will not be required and as for strike action we are all in the dark and it does appear that days will be lost and I fail to see how this is not a form of hypocracy if teachers say it is a deraliction of duty on parents part to take children out of school during term time.

You are quite right, granbunny - I think I was very naive when I entered teaching, even though I was 31. I really wanted to make a difference in the lives of children who were disadvantaged, as I had been. I had a few obvious successes, like getting the canteen to help me with a girl of 14 who desperately wanted to lose weight, but then there was the girl who had been taken into care because her mother was 'entertaining clients' in the family home and had introduced her to drugs. She was a very accomplished liar and I really fell for it. She told me her 16-year old sister had just had a baby, in care, and the only way she could see her was if I let her go out a lunchtime. Her big blue eyes swam with tears. Against all the school rules, I let her go. The police brought her back - she was found soliciting in the local park. She had been in five different foster homes and each time had accused the house-father of sexually abusing her,ruining their careers and sometimes their marriages. Years later, I saw her on TV , weeping and detailing her story of abuse. None of it was true, but it certainly got her a lot of attention. I felt so sorry for her, but I think perhaps too much damage had been done by the time she was 14.

When people talk about the good old days, I think of some of the stories I heard and devoutly hope that we never go back to them.

greatnan - mercifully, things are a little better when pupils report abuse.

in the sixties and seventies, it was common for young people not to be believed, but i remember one family having their father removed for abusing all his four children.

when they don't say directly, and teachers express concerns, though, it often leads to families moving on to avoid being investigated.

sometimes social services can't or won't do anything. in the nineties i had a pupil whose dad made her a prostitute. she was fourteen. a member of school staff took a social worker round to the house where the girl lived, and found two men there, her clients. social services wouldn't remove her because she wouldn't make a complaint. she had, however, tried to kill herself several times.

we have some pupils who are allowed to stay in school from early morning to late evening just to keep them out of their living accommodation as much as we can. we've had pupils who live in fields. literally, in fields, under bushes. not many , but some.

so things have improved a little but not much. and we can't make the world right.

Of course when I joined my comprehensive school in 1973 I had no idea what the attitude to 'my'pupils would be. I quickly learned, and if anybody thinks I would keep quiet about it they haven't read many of my posts! I made a huge fuss about the tie incident, and I stayed because I genuinely thought the remedial pupils needed someone who cared about them. I moved on only when I was offered the chance to run the Schools' Remedial Service, which meant I could 'spread the word' to every primary and middle school in The Wirral.
An even worse incident occurred with that particular headmaster, and it has haunted me ever since. A girl of about 12 told me in a roundabout way that her father and uncles were abusing her. I told the head, and he simply refused to believe that 'a good catholic family' could behave like that. This was before any child protection policies had been put into place and there was no method for me to go over his head within the education system. I rang the NSPCC and told them of my suspicions, but even there I received very little information - they also seemed reluctant to get involved, but they said they would consult with Social Services. I left the school soon after, but I have always wondered if I could have done anything more.

There has been some suggestion of changing the length of terms in the news, goldengirl, but it seems Teachers' Unions are against it...

Would a 4 term year rather than a 3 term year make a difference I wonder? Having a 5/6 week holiday - longer for some independent schools seems to cause more problems than it solves. Children probably forget what they've been taught, get bored and cause trouble whilst parents have to find child care for great chunks of time. More frequent breaks might benefit teachers as well - healthier way of living I would have thought for a pressurised job.

I am amazed at the level of worry there is over Ofsted inspections. Businesses have inspections every 6 months to ensure they comply with a wide range of standards. Failure to comply can mean the end of a business; yet the cost of compliance is considerable. Every country has its own way of operating too so there are compliances and inspections related to those. Bring out a new product and guess what? More inspections and cost. The pressure in these constrained times is heavy, believe me and we don't have long holidays in which to recover because of deadlines. I guess I'm being contentious here but I've been a teacher too and working outside of the school environment came as a real culture shock.

I think from what you have said though, Greatnan, that your teaching career was quite a long time ago? I remember a head back in the eighties getting cross with me because I organised some toast for a child who was practically fainting from hunger. Now, of course, breakfast clubs are the norm. The care and wellbeing of pupils is an important part of what Ofsted looks at and I think the early rounds of Ofsted inspections in the nineties helped sort out attitudes and practices such as you describe.

If the 'where is your tie' incident had happened when I was teaching, I think I would have mentioned, in the child's hearing, there and then, that the tie wasn't really the issue that morning.

Greatnan I always chose schools I'd work with very carefully. I could have never work in a school whose ethos was contrary to mine. As soon as I realised I didn't agree with the Head on many policies in teh school where I was senior teacher, I just left and sought another where I could totally get involved and truly believed in the way we were trying to tackle failure, truancy, etc, to support kids and families.

One could argue of course that staying in a school where kids are treated with such coldness as you describe, to try and balance things out, is really valuable in other ways, And I'd totally agree. Not for me though, I had to feel I could totally get behind what we were trying to achieve, together, staff, community, parents.

Just out of interest, what proportion are boys, Jess? The gap between boys and girls in performance in writing remains one of the most difficult issues in primary schools.

Re literacy, the gap is huge at 5. Some children barely talking, others bursting with knowledge and loving to learn. My just 4 yr old GS knows all his consonant sounds (demon at I spy), recognises his numbers and a number of letters, writes his name and uses lots of long words, like "similar". He is not a "geeky" child and rarely sits and looks at books. (too active)
Hard for primaries to meet the needs of the full spectrum. For years our school had about 10% of intake who had not really even started to read. Things have improved a bit but we still have to have off a proportion into joint english/humanities group that have a very heavy focus on literacy because they are still at the cat sat not he mat stage of reading. Several TAs and a teacher with about 15 kids. Just one of the ways we are trying to catch them up - but the primaries have had them for 7 years!!! Frustrating.