School closures are snow joke

wallbash

Starting salary of about £21,000.
Which in some parts of England and WALES :rolleyes: is high . But as you have posted thats after a long period of further education. Not so good in the London area.

( and yes I know about the extra London weighting)

countrygal

Aren't you sick of those highly paid teachers?

Their hefty salaries are driving up taxes, and they only work nine or ten months of the year!




It's time we put things into perspective and pay them for what they do... babysit!

We can get babysitters for less than the minimum wage.



That’s right. We would give them £3 an hour and only the hours they worked, not any of that silly planning time.



That would be one day (7:45am to 4:00pm, with 45 minutes off for lunch).

Each parent should pay £19.50 a day for these teachers to babysit their children.



Now, how many do they teach at any one time… maybe 30? So that’s £19.50 x 30 = £585 a day.

However, remember they only work 180 days a year!



We're not going to pay them for any vacations!




Lets see… that’s £585 x 180 = £105,300 a year. (Hold on… my calculator must need new batteries!!)

What about those special teachers and the ones with Masters degrees?



Well, we could pay them minimum wage just to be fair, £5.52 an hour.



That would be £5.52 x 6.5 hours x 30 children x 180 days = £193,752 per year.


Wait a minute, there’s something wrong here!

Make a teacher smile. Send this to someone who appreciates teachers!



(Average teacher salary £21,000/180 day = £116.66 per day/30 students = £3.88/6.5 hours = 59p per hour per student.

A very inexpensive babysitter, and they even educate your kids!

wallbash

We have kept this rant going for days , you come along and ruin it with logic .
Please consider yourself banned!

ellionic

My son's school has only been closed once due to the snow and i am so glad they did shut it, it was -8 and my son has to walk to school yes he has a good winter coat but omg with that wind and snow we got he would never speck to me again lol
The whole week was bad but i kept sending him because due to sickness his attendance is only 90% The school have kept us updated every morning at about 6am they have sent us a txt message letting us know that the school is open,one day they sent them home early and we were given plenty of notice that they were finishing again by txt, i think every school should do this.

My daughters school has been shut a whole 7 days, on the first day of closing there was nothing on the radio,radio websites, and the school was all locked up its lucky i only live around the corner.
It was only on the 3rd day that it was put on a radio website and it was not the one we had been told it would be on. I have no problem with her being off school but i think this is shocking. it reopened on monday the playground is still full of ice but they have cleared all the walk ways and keeping the children indoors all day.
Where i live we have 3 local radio stations and they are all giving off differant info it would be nice for my local council to have all schools in county all in one place so us parents know what the hell is going on.
This grit shortage is a joke my boyfriend is a self emplyed taxis driver and so far has lost out on 4 days work. and its snowing again now on top of ice maybe tomorrow will be another snow day :rolleyes: local councils want there a**e kicking for this.

rumncoke

Well, yet again school closed. The primarys are open but comps closed except for exams. Main roads are clear, no ice, but transport cancelled, for those that live outside village, so school shut.

My concern is that we are now bringing up a generation that will make little effort at the first sign of bad weather. What happened to walking. DH lived in Yorkshire as a child & regularly walked 2 miles through the snow to school (in short trousers too!)

He has not missed a day from work due to the weather despite a 20 mile journey. Yesterday he was up at 5.30 & set off at 6.15. Normally leaves house at 7.30. I know that the amount of snow varies across the country & therefore driving conditions, but I do believe that an awful lot of people just don't bother.

On the subject of teachers I have to agree with Welshwoofs. Averaged out most teachers do not work as many hours over the year as those in the private sector.

FatAndy

wallbash wrote: »

Did you read this thread as it was originally posted ??
It was amended ( when the OP was overwhelmed )

Can I just point out that I changed the heading of the opening post but I didn't change any of the text at all. It's all as it was when I originally posted it if you want to read it. As I admitted later I flew of the handle a bit and when I calmed down I apologised for any offence caused to any teachers (see post #97).

However what I am apologising for is targeting the wrong people, ie teachers. I still believe that I'm well within my rights to be angry at someone. I just don't know for sure who it is.

The fact remains that our school was closed as a result of a 2cm snow fall. Considering it's January 2cm of snow is hardly unexpected. The snow fall ended 19 hours prior to the time the school should have opened on Wednesday. There was no snow overnight on Tuesday and temperatures didn't fall below freezing however the school still closed.

It's all well and good asking why we hadn't made alternative child care arrangements but, be honest, if you were in our situation would you have done? If we'd had six inches of snow and more was forecast we'd have been phoning around on Tuesday night to get someone on standby. But the reality was that we had very little snow and no more was forecast. Indeed when the alarm went off at 6.30am on Wednesday and we looked out of the window no more snow had fallen. We still took the precautions of checking for school closures on the internet and listening to the local radio station school closures bulletins. Our school wasn't mentioned so again no worries.

So rather than blaming the parents for being unprepared could I ask why the school wasn't prepared for the possibility of a tiny bit of snow in January? Surely not everyone has been taken in by this global warming claptrap? This is a small village primary school, located in the middle of a housing estate, next to a busy main road which is always one of the first in the area to be gritted. I'd like to ask -

1. Why had the headmaster not made sure in advance that school had a supply of grit available for the caretaker to distibute. It's only a small school so it would only require a small amount of grit to make it 'safe'.

2. Why did the local authority not help out? They had nineteen hours to clear away 2cm of snow. Bearing in mind that the school is located in the middle of a housing estate this would have benefited all the local residents as well.

3. Why do the pen-pushers in the LEA not stop twiddling their thumbs and show some initiative?

giantmutantbroccoli

I can understand people being angry and frustrated because the schools are shut and they don't have alterntative arrangements, but I'm surprised at the amount of venom directed at the teachers. I mean, they're not in control of the weather are they? Unless those year 9 science lessons were really a cover for something far more sinister. Which would explain why I don't remember all mine - brainwashing!

£21k a year is frankly a rubbish salary given that they have to get a degree first, then spend the working part of that year standing in front of a room full of kids trying to get them to stuff they generally don't want to do, like learn about English literature. I find it bad enough giving presentations to people at work, and they don't sit there nudging each other and gossiping about my dress-sense! No, I'm not a teacher but I remember going to school and we were pretty awful to some of our teachers.

That said, if I suddenly had to figure out what to do with my children (imaginary children, bear with me ) while I'm at work I'd be a bit stuck. If you get on with your neighbours, maybe you could organise something with someone who's at home and can watch the kids?

Welshwoofs

footiemad wrote: »

To Welshwolfs

I do not usually post on here but having scanned through a number of boards to look at various things I came past this one. How dare you criticise teachers? My mum was a headteacher for 20 odd years and after finally succumbing to all of the stress : and pressure she was diagnosed with stress and depression caused through work. (Ed: The rest snipped as I lost the will to even read it)

Please stop knee jerking and re-read my posting. You'll find I said "not all" - which means I think that some are hard-working and selfless, but not all. If you want to believe that all (as in every single person) in the teaching profession is selfless and hard-working then please do carry on enjoying fantasyville. I am always very careful with how I phrase things on this forum because, as sure as eggs is eggs, you'll get some paper-thin skinned person launching into amateur dramatics if they feel my posting has damaged their finer sensibilities.

wallbash wrote: »

Five times as many children fighting to get into school , makes me believe that those parents think my wife and her colleagues are doing a good job.

Well I'm not surprised...but then I also hold the unpopular view that private education draws the cream of the teaching profession. Why? Because parents shelling out large sums for their children's education expect good quality.

I saw both sides of the education divide as a kid - local state school and Cheltenham Ladies. I can state, hand on heart, that only one teacher I had in the state school gave a monkey's (and she had a nervous breakdown), whereas the teaching staff at the private school, although I didn't appreciate it at the time, were bloody good.

FatAndy

aimee21j wrote: »

I do feel for you Andy but taking a look round the site, it seems that you really don't like teachers, which is what the original post of this thread was about (before you amended it when you apologised). The fact that both teachers and students all got there but the school was shut anyway is not an ideal situation and I would be annoyed too. Please don't blame teachers for management decisions. As for the name calling, it's six of one and half a dozen of the other.

Hi Aimee,

Firstly as I've just pointed out above I didn't change anything in my original post other than the heading. The rest is as it was when I first posted it, in it's original, unexpurgated form.

I would like to make it clear that I have got nothing against teachers as a whole, what I do have is an issue with teachers who could have got into work but didn't make the effort to do so. Equally I have an issue with supermarket workers, accounts clerks, welders, toilet cleaners, investment bankers, in fact anyone who over the last couple of weeks has looked out of the window, seen a bit of snow, and thought "Nah, can't be bothered. Think I'll stay home today and build a snowman".

This morning on BBC Breakfast they featured a head teacher who had to crawl across ice to reach his school because it was impossible to walk on it. My first reaction was 'top bloke'. My second reaction was 'I wish he was the head teacher in my daughter's school'. I fully respect that particular teacher, but that's because he's earned my respect. Equally I respect any other teacher who has made an effort, I don't respect those that gave up without trying. Simple as that really. If I hadn't hadn't blown a fuse when I posted the opening post I might have realised that as most of my daughter's teachers had got to school then I should have been praising them, not criticising them. It was a stupid reaction on my part although I suspect I'm not the first person to make an idiotic comment in the heat of the moment.

Personally I blame my parents :rolleyes:. I was brought up to honest and to always do the right thing. I therefore strongly believe that if you get paid a salary and you're required to be somewhere to earn that salary then you have an obligation to make an effort to get there. If you genuinely tried to get to your place of work and couldn't, or if you got there and were sent home (against your will) then fair enough, you've earned my respect. You tried.

It may appear that I'm picking on teachers but this thread is about schools so logically teachers will be the subject of many of the threads. If every High Street bank in my part of the world had closed because of 2cm of snow then we'd all be talking about bankers.

As Chris Evans said this morning (and this works better spoken rather than written) "The difference between try and triumph is a little bit of umph!".

Welshwoofs

giantmutantbroccoli wrote: »

£21k a year is frankly a rubbish salary given that they have to get a degree first, then spend the working part of that year standing in front of a room full of kids trying to get them to stuff they generally don't want to do, like learn about English literature.

£21k is the starting salary and that's higher than a lot of graduates. In fact many graduates these days can't get jobs at all, or have to take fairly unskilled work at minimum wage when they leave university.

All the teachers I know have salaries in the £30k range. There is information on salary below and, before another over-sensitive lily whinges, I think the salary information below is FAIR FOR THE JOB. However that does mean that I have no sympathy for the frequent bleating I hear from SOME TEACHERS about how poorly paid they are.

And no...I'm not jealous. I'm in the 40% tax bracket myself.

http://www.tda.gov.uk/Recruit/lifeasateacher/payandbenefits.aspx

Starting salary

Once you have completed your initial teacher training and achieved qualified teacher status (QTS), from September 2009 you can expect to start as a newly qualified teacher in England and Wales on £21,102 a year (or £26,000 if you work in inner London).


England and Wales. Inner London. Outer London. London fringes
Leadership group
Max (headteachers) £102,734 £109,658 £105,640 £103,750
Min (headteachers) £41,426 £48,353 £44,331 £42,439
Min £36,618 £43,538 £39,523 £37,627
Advanced skills teachers
Max £55,669 £62,596 £58,577 £56,681
Min £36,618 £43,538 £39,523 £37,627
Post-threshold pay scale
Max £35,929 £43,692 £39,523 £36,945
Min £33,412 £40,288 £36,753 £34,426
Main pay scale
Max £30,842 £35,568 £34,326 £31,855
Min £21,102 £26,000 £24,552 £22,117

Teaching and learning responsibility (TLR) payment
An additional payment to a teacher for taking on sustained additional responsibilities for which the teacher is accountable.

TLR 1 max £12,114
TLR 1 min £7,158
TLR 2 max £6,057
TLR 2 min £2,478

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