Teachers working from home

The problem is that most of the paperwork needs to be done during term time; marking particularly, reports, assessments, day to day planning and preparation. Planning can be done in peace and quiet of the holidays but the curriculum is interfered with changed regularly, so it was starting from scratch each year. It is obvious children being 'home-educated ' will now have to be checked on, and that will be passed to the schools to implement.
I am retired now, but I would willingly have sacrificed some holiday for the regular compulsory training courses on new initiatives , rather than the end of a busy school day, with 32 times 3 sets of books waiting to be marked before next day.
Most staff are in school by 8am and rarely leave before 6pm, with work to do at home, a great deal of it unnecessary form filling and writing different comments in green, pink and blue pens(never red which apparently made pupils feel threatened.)
I loved teaching but the ever increasing bureaucracy is draining the pleasure out of it.

I am pretty sure it means marking and preparation at home. There can be subtle (or not so subtle) pressures to put in a long day at school and if the emphasis shifts from working in your empty classroom to working at home, that is good news.

Baggs

As others have said, teachers already do part of their work at home and always have. What "teacher working from home" suggests to me is that the person is teaching from home online, which is different.

I doubt it, unless the teacher only has sixth form classes - younger children would need to be supervised. I've never taught in a school, but don't even sixth formers need to have an adult in the room?

'Working from home' in this case probably means formalising the work that is already done, and counting it in the weekly hours worked, rather than assuming that teachers will do it in their own time out of good will - so might involve coming in late if there are no classes in the morning, and/or leaving early if the last class is over. Whether the teacher goes home to mark or to go to a Nativity play (or to get a haircut) shouldn't matter, so long as the work is done before the next class.

Skydancer

I do appreciate that teachers work long hours especially evenings and weekends. But (and this is a serious question) don’t the long holidays make up for this?

I used to spend half my summer holidays in school, taking delivery of IT equipment, setting up new IT systems, auditing what we had in terms of hardware, software, timetabling, writing programmes for the following year etc.etc. Furthermore, I rarely had a lunch break, was out in the playground at 8.40am in all weathers, speaking to parents and ensuring the safety of pupils.
The rest of the holiday time, I reckoned made up for my lost weekends and social life.

The doctor, who deemed me permanently unfit to work, sussed out that I was doing at least double what I was contracted to do. I was entitled to no-contact time, to allow for management duties, I rarely got it, because we were always short staffed and short of money.
Always empty promises.

Some may say, that was my choice to do so, but if I didn't I would be working in a total muddle, to the detriment of my pupils. On top of that there was the pressure from senior management to keep on top of things. I often felt I was on a treadmill.

Unless you have lived that life, you have no conception of what is involved.

Skydancer

I do appreciate that teachers work long hours especially evenings and weekends. But (and this is a serious question) don’t the long holidays make up for this?

No. Part of the holidays is usually taken up with planning ahead, or catching up with what couldn't be done on the paperwork side during the term..

I do appreciate that teachers work long hours especially evenings and weekends. But (and this is a serious question) don’t the long holidays make up for this?

. Yes Baggs, that is exactly what I thought.
I always did marking, preparation etc from home if I could because the heating went off promptly at 3.30pm and the classrooms very quickly became freezing cold.
I have noticed that quite a few secondary schools seem to send the pupils home by mid-day on a Friday, presumably so the staff can have their Planning. Preparation and Assessment time together, saving on cover . I believe the school day starts earlier to make up the time.

As others have said, teachers already do part of their work at home and always have. What "teacher working from home" suggests to me is that the person is teaching from home online, which is different.

Doodledog

I never understand why people not in the workplace of the people concerned are bothered about others working from home. If the Head can manage the situation so all the classes are covered, work is prepared and marked and children are not left alone, that's what matters.

Things are very different from how they used to be, and I wonder if that is the crux of the matter - those who left the workplace some time ago maybe struggle to understand that.

Being able to log into a work system from anywhere means that 'presenteeism' is no longer necessary. That doesn't meant that people are skiving. If they want to go to their child's Nativity and they are not teaching at the time, why not? The marking or preparation that might have otherwise happened on school premises can just as easily be done in the evening or on Saturday. It a bit of flexibility helps to retain teachers, why do other people care?

Well said!!

It's one career I never wanted, even though I had the qualifications to do a PGCE and a few teachers I had were encouraging me to do this. Even in the nineties, teachers were leaving because of stress and schools that tended to have vacancies for teachers were ones in inner cities. Somehow trying to teach a group of disinterested and aggressive 15 and 16 years in a school in Hackney was something I didn't want.

I found that the fact that I was highly qualified in a number of areas, meant that the HT kept adding to my load. He refused to listen.
Few were interested in obtaining qualifications.

There has to be some attempt to make teaching a more attractive career, especially to those who have a family. We cannot continue with the current situation and I for one applaud any attempt to boost teacher numbers and to give teachers job satisfaction rather than being frantically under stress all the time. As things are, no-one is going to feel attracted to teaching.

If some of the prep/marking time can be incorporated into working hours by doing this at home where a mother can be on the premises for her children, this has to be a good thing. The logistics will not be easy, but nowhere in the proposals does it say it will be easy.

I never understand why people not in the workplace of the people concerned are bothered about others working from home. If the Head can manage the situation so all the classes are covered, work is prepared and marked and children are not left alone, that's what matters.

Things are very different from how they used to be, and I wonder if that is the crux of the matter - those who left the workplace some time ago maybe struggle to understand that.

Being able to log into a work system from anywhere means that 'presenteeism' is no longer necessary. That doesn't meant that people are skiving. If they want to go to their child's Nativity and they are not teaching at the time, why not? The marking or preparation that might have otherwise happened on school premises can just as easily be done in the evening or on Saturday. It a bit of flexibility helps to retain teachers, why do other people care?

My dd has given up being a teacher after 18 years due to working all hours. She now does SENCO one day a week and has set up her own business to do various neurodivergent assessments for which she has qualified and which are well paid. She will finally get a life. She has got out before she gets too stressed and her health suffers which it was starting to do. Marydoll I fully understand.

I always worked from home in the evenings and weekends. I had hardly any leisure time, due to my workload. It broke my health in the end.
The L.A doctor, who saw me, could not believe the hours I had been working.

Elegran

If teaching were such an attractive career that there were queues of people wanting to do it, and if all schools had enough funding to pay for an abundance of enthusiastic staff, perhaps a teacher's day could be structured so that half of them worked in a classroom mornings and at home doing preparation and other paperwork in the afternoons, and the other half worked at home in the mornings and at the school in the afternoons. Their evenings and weekends could be genuine leisure time. Dream on.

👏👏👏

If teaching were such an attractive career that there were queues of people wanting to do it, and if all schools had enough funding to pay for an abundance of enthusiastic staff, perhaps a teacher's day could be structured so that half of them worked in a classroom mornings and at home doing preparation and other paperwork in the afternoons, and the other half worked at home in the mornings and at the school in the afternoons. Their evenings and weekends could be genuine leisure time. Dream on.

I’m not really sure WFH can work at all for most mainstreams schools.

I know my daughter often brings home work, she’s an infant teacher, so things must be so much worse in Juniors and Secondary Schools.