Sarah Garcia de Bustos is on the Conservative Party’s list of approved parliamentary candidates. She trained as a journalist before moving into teaching.
I’m a mum of two and, like every parent, I want my children to have the best start in life. I trust that their school wants the same. Their dad and I help them with their homework, fight for a decent seat at the annual Nativity play and send in tins for the Harvest Festival. In return, the school teaches them properly – five days a week – and helps them grow into capable young adults.
Lucy Powell, the Education Secretary, seems to think the best way to make this happen is to let teachers work fewer days.
Ms Powell has asked the School Teachers’ Review Body to work out how schools could let teachers work fewer than the current 195 days a year. The 1,265 hours of directed time wouldn’t change, so in practice a teacher could squeeze a five-day week into four longer days. Children would still be in school five days a week, so somebody else would have to teach them on the fifth. Whether that is a different teacher, or a senior teaching assistant is not discussed.
On paper it’s optional and headteachers will decide. But I’ve worked in schools long enough to know what happens to ‘optional’ when money is tight and good staff are hard to keep. Once one school offers it to attract staff, the school down the road has to follow. And so on.
I spent many years in the classroom before becoming a head of subject at an educational charity, so I know what the job is actually like. I can describe the strain of teaching 32 children, lesson after lesson, but I’m not sure I can make you feel it. There’s the marking, and the hundreds of exercise books, and the need to maintain order in a packed classroom, where one child kicking off can spoil it for everyone else.
A compressed week doesn’t make any of that easier. The pile of books is just as high. A difficult Year 9 class doesn’t settle down because their teacher has been in since half seven and won’t leave until six. It’s the same job, done by someone who is more tired.
It isn’t hard to see what it means for schools either. If pupils are in for five days and some teachers for four, headteachers can pay for more cover, accept that children will be taught by a rotating cast of different adults. Or just merge classes together.
With budgets as they are, I worry many will end up doing the latter. I once had to co-teach 64 Year 7s in one room, and I can tell you it doesn’t work for anyone – teachers or pupils.
Burnout is real. I’ve watched brilliant colleagues walk away from the job because, however hard they work, it simply doesn’t touch the sides. I’ve seen pupils go without the attention they needed because there just wasn’t enough of their teacher to go round.
But what drives teachers out is bad behaviour, endless paperwork and leaders who don’t back them up. A four-day week fixes none of that. It also hands heads a new problem: try building a timetable where every teacher has a different day off, and see how much time is left for raising standards.
Conservatives should be talking about what actually puts pressure on classrooms, and housing is a big part of it. When a new estate goes up, the families move in long before the extra school places arrive. Andrew Griffith is right to want to replace the Section 106 system with a single charge on developers, so that planning stops getting bogged down.
Would-be MPs are often asked what Private Member’s Bill they would introduce. Mine would require any charge on developers to fund the school places their homes create. If a developer builds a hundred family homes, the children who move into them should get a place in a classroom of a sensible size with a proper teacher in it, and the developer should pay for it, not leave local schools to pick up the bill. Labour wants 1.5 million new homes, with little sign of the school places to match, and at the same time it’s telling teachers they can work fewer days.
What would have a real impact is classes small enough to teach well. It will be the pupils who ultimately pay the price for squeezing five days into four. As an educator and a mum, I think that price is too high.
Sarah Garcia de Bustos is on the Conservative Party’s list of approved parliamentary candidates. She trained as a journalist before moving into teaching.
I’m a mum of two and, like every parent, I want my children to have the best start in life. I trust that their school wants the same. Their dad and I help them with their homework, fight for a decent seat at the annual Nativity play and send in tins for the Harvest Festival. In return, the school teaches them properly – five days a week – and helps them grow into capable young adults.
Lucy Powell, the Education Secretary, seems to think the best way to make this happen is to let teachers work fewer days.
Ms Powell has asked the School Teachers’ Review Body to work out how schools could let teachers work fewer than the current 195 days a year. The 1,265 hours of directed time wouldn’t change, so in practice a teacher could squeeze a five-day week into four longer days. Children would still be in school five days a week, so somebody else would have to teach them on the fifth. Whether that is a different teacher, or a senior teaching assistant is not discussed.
On paper it’s optional and headteachers will decide. But I’ve worked in schools long enough to know what happens to ‘optional’ when money is tight and good staff are hard to keep. Once one school offers it to attract staff, the school down the road has to follow. And so on.
I spent many years in the classroom before becoming a head of subject at an educational charity, so I know what the job is actually like. I can describe the strain of teaching 32 children, lesson after lesson, but I’m not sure I can make you feel it. There’s the marking, and the hundreds of exercise books, and the need to maintain order in a packed classroom, where one child kicking off can spoil it for everyone else.
A compressed week doesn’t make any of that easier. The pile of books is just as high. A difficult Year 9 class doesn’t settle down because their teacher has been in since half seven and won’t leave until six. It’s the same job, done by someone who is more tired.
It isn’t hard to see what it means for schools either. If pupils are in for five days and some teachers for four, headteachers can pay for more cover, accept that children will be taught by a rotating cast of different adults. Or just merge classes together.
With budgets as they are, I worry many will end up doing the latter. I once had to co-teach 64 Year 7s in one room, and I can tell you it doesn’t work for anyone – teachers or pupils.
Burnout is real. I’ve watched brilliant colleagues walk away from the job because, however hard they work, it simply doesn’t touch the sides. I’ve seen pupils go without the attention they needed because there just wasn’t enough of their teacher to go round.
But what drives teachers out is bad behaviour, endless paperwork and leaders who don’t back them up. A four-day week fixes none of that. It also hands heads a new problem: try building a timetable where every teacher has a different day off, and see how much time is left for raising standards.
Conservatives should be talking about what actually puts pressure on classrooms, and housing is a big part of it. When a new estate goes up, the families move in long before the extra school places arrive. Andrew Griffith is right to want to replace the Section 106 system with a single charge on developers, so that planning stops getting bogged down.
Would-be MPs are often asked what Private Member’s Bill they would introduce. Mine would require any charge on developers to fund the school places their homes create. If a developer builds a hundred family homes, the children who move into them should get a place in a classroom of a sensible size with a proper teacher in it, and the developer should pay for it, not leave local schools to pick up the bill. Labour wants 1.5 million new homes, with little sign of the school places to match, and at the same time it’s telling teachers they can work fewer days.
What would have a real impact is classes small enough to teach well. It will be the pupils who ultimately pay the price for squeezing five days into four. As an educator and a mum, I think that price is too high.