School holidays

[Deleted User]

Bit defensive wasn't that, exiled claret!

I think teachers do a great job on the whole and I wouldn't trade places with one in a million years, don't think I'd have the patience to be nice to 30 children day in day out, not with how rude some of them are around my area!

Point is though, there are (usually) 365 days in the year and out of those I get 23 days a year just to myself!! (I'm not counting weekends and public holidays as we all get those!).

So, after having to take time off for teacher training days I've got 18 days holiday left for the entire year, that's not exactly much fun is it?

[Deleted User]

Dragon Breath, I wouldn't dare to spend a training day down the pub! What a waste of valuable running time

Muttley (and others). On the `too much holiday' theme, maybe you have a point.

Strange thing is though I thought the Tories wanted to make it possible for parents to use their `state school' money to buy into private education. As we in the state sector are exhorted to be more like our better perfoming private sector colleagues maybe the first step could be introducing private sector length holidays into state education. That'd give us a good 4-5 weeks more holiday!

Of course if you REALLY want the best for your kids....

Hilly

I can't wait for my 6 weeks school holidays, so much running time!:o)

Barkles

To answer the question

not soon enough!


BR is dead right.. some public schools break up this week....

Barkles

DB trolling!!!!

[Deleted User]

as a parent and not a teacher the answer is obvious... too soon!

Barkles

LOL!!!

[Deleted User]

My son's school breaks up next tuesday and he goes back to school on a thursday (...point?!)

[Deleted User]

good point about easing them in trinity but at 8 years old school is hardly a difficult traumatic place to be!

We do always try to do something nice on training days as cinema round our way is mega cheap if you go before 12 - bonus!

I just wish the playcentres would run for the half weeks that they're off

Pippi LS

How nice of you to call teachers 'little darlings' Trinity! And yes we do need to be eased back in gently.

Afraid there's more to teaching than just putting out the plasticine nowadays though. Have you seen what 7 year olds are expected to be able to do?

[Deleted User]

Yeah tell me about it I was amazed by the potential stress that my son could have been put under when, at age 6, he was made to take SATS! Luckily his year 2 teacher was fab and she made it totally stress-free for all the kids, just made it feel like the normal lessons he was used to but with a bit extra added on.

I'm sure in some countries they don't even send them to school until they're 7, let alone test them!

However, I must say, when I was looking for schools closer to home I did base a lot of my judgement on the league tables which are formulated from SATS results I think?

[Deleted User]

Both my primary and secondary schools were pants! My parent's weren't to know though, we didn't have as much of a wealth of information or access to such back then!

Totally agree with SATS only giving a somewhat blinkered view though. I really liked my son's first school and I thought his teacher was fab and the children were really friendly, it was just way too far away to travel to in the morning.

However, it is 60% Muslim (has just been featured in the local rag as being first in the area to offer halal meat at school lunches!) and, of the other 40%, a great deal is made up from other ethnic minorities.

A lot of the kids there were pretty fluent in English by the time they were set to leave for secondary but, at my son's age at the time, there were a huge amount who couldn't speak English at all and, as well as being probably quite difficult for the teachers, probably reflected badly on their SATS report, not because they weren't bright, just because they didn't understand what was being put in front of them?