Give teachers a ‘mark from home’ day, says NEU boss Daniel Kebede

When you’ve done the job, you know what else there is to do besides standing in front of a class.
Until then the continuing questions about why teachers need time for all the paperwork and planning will go on, mostly from anyone not a teacher or not connected to a teacher.

When Planning, Preparation and Assessment (PPA) time first started, I sat in a Governor meeting listening to educated people arguing that teachers should not be allowed to do their PPA away from school because they weren’t sure we could be trusted to work at home!

No idea about how much time it takes, for marking, assessment and preparation for lessons including the differentiation in provision based on what the marking shows.

Or the person who assured me that I’d be well off with all the overtime I’d been doing, working in the evening or weekend, or during the holidays, or even running my after-school club.

My DD works in a school where the teachers can have their PPA - planning, preparation and assessment time at home. Either a morning or an afternoon. The staff really appreciate it. Teacher recruitment and retention is at an all time low so giving this perk is very attractive.

I used to have lots of mark at home days - in the college holidays.

PPE time has been seriously eroded over the past 20 years and we now have to work at home, late into the evenings and weekends. Our contracts have been broken over and over.

Teaching is and always has been hard but enjoyable work. Focusing on the learning process. Now it’s endless justification and paperwork.

A day or even half a day at home, preparing and marking means quality, concentrated time, not interrupted by phone calls, questions and unwanted lesson coverage.

Those calling us lazy have no idea about what we go through.

I knew it’s really called PPA but for years we called it PPE. Planning, Preparation and Everything Else. 😊

4allweknow

I thought that was one of the reasons the school day was shortened for children already.

The school day hasn't been shortened, lunch used to be an hour break, it's now shorter (cost cutting?)

I was latterly a Uni lecturer. Unfortunately my key subject was one that changes annually so that meant that much of the previous year's lecture and assessment materials had to be re-written annually. I had formal class lectures/tutorials for 21 hours a week and spent at least 30 hours on prep, and another ten or so on marking. On top of that came record-keeping and report-writing, plus meetings. We had annual inspections to fit in and if teaching on external professional courses% (in my case professional Accountancy) there were annual inspections for those as well. In term time (36 weeks for professional courses) I worked about 70 hours a week, and at least half of the "holidays", albeit at times to suit myself. I+ was also a personal tutor for two degree groups meaning termly meetings with each student plus being available for any student with a problem (and lots of them had problems).

Fortunately I loved it all, but my average rate of pay was probably below NMW.

Grandmabatty, ditto I was on SQA Higher Exam Team and a marker @ Higher, SG and Nats. There is nothing more boring than a whole day of marking!

Mojack26 other than still marking exam papers after midnight after a full day of teaching

Madmeg that’s true even in primary. Not so much because the subject changes drastically, but because the cohort of children does.

The basic planning and differentiation for one year did not always match the new groups’ needs, which meant devising other strategies that would work for them.