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What Teachers Tapped This Week #47 - 20th August 2018

20 August 2018

It’s holidays… BUT – there is still tapping to be done, AND we are running an amazing giveaway over the summerFor every question you answer throughout August you will get a raffle ticket to win THE TEACHER TAPP CANON. Also, spot prizes for users who have long answering streaks. 

RIGHT, onto results! This week we’ve looked at…

1.Teachers dream about their jobs a lot!

We asked Teacher Tappsters what questions they wanted us to ask during the holidays. A theme that came up was how often do teachers dream about their work? The answer is: pretty often!

Just in the last week more than half of teachers had dreamt about school!

Not all dreams are equal, though. Senior leaders are most likely to have had a dream. While headteachers float away during their nightly slumber!

Given that exam themes are among the most common dreams across the world, perhaps this week’s GCSE results will prompt some more! We shall be asking…

 

2.Ofsted changes

A new Ofsted framework is on the way, meaning there’s so many rumours flying around you could mistake education news for a football transfer market.

One mooted change is the downgrading of exam results into a new measure of ‘quality of education’. Tappsters are supportive of the change – with around 70-80% of each group in favour. 

But what should count during an Ofsted inspection? Over the years there have been loud public spats over the use of lesson observations, book scrutiny, and pupil voice. 

Yet teachers seemed broadly in favour of all these things – though primary teachers were less happy with inspector-led lesson observations and exam results. (Is this more evidence that primary teachers think SATs results are dodgy?)

Pupil voice also gets a vote of confidence with 83% of teachers thinking inspectors should speak to them. Question is: what are the 17% worried about?!

 

3.How’s your summer going?

Another question teachers wanted to know was the point at which everyone gets bored of the holiday. Turns out, they’re not bored by the end of week three!

People also wanted to know how much do school colleagues talk to each other over the summer holidays?

The answer is: A LOT!

The yellow box is the most interesting because it shows people who have only contacted colleagues for non-work reasons. High rates in these boxes show that teachers are often friends with each other away from work. 

In fact, 8% of teachers are even going on holiday with someone who also works at the school. Given 25% of teachers are in a relationship with another teacher, however, we may assume quite a few of these are couples working in the same school. 

Perhaps a surprising benefit of the summer holidays is that colleagues get to spend more time getting to know each other away from work, which likely pays dividends once they’re back in the classroom given that teams operate better when members understand each other more. 

 

Where do teachers holiday?

In order, the three most popular holidays for teachers are:

  1. Hotels abroad
  2. Self-catering in the UK
  3. Camping & caravaning!

And if you’re staying at home, you’re not alone – 17% of people said they were not going on any type of holiday.

 

Chores! Chores! Chores!

Do teachers spend their holidays sunning themselves and snoozing? Actually, there’s a lot of chores involved! Within the first two weeks of summer more than half of teachers had a haircut, a quarter visited the doctor, and a whopping 72% cleaned out a room or cupboard. 

Not working!

On the upside, most of you do seem to be having a thorough break from school. With only 15% of teachers answering school-related emails on a given day and that figure is heavily skewed by headteachers (among whom about 40% answered emails on a given day). 

Spare a thought for the non-teaching staff, however, who are keeping schools open over the summer. On any given day, 70% of you said the school is still opened for staff – presumably by a site manager or finance, admin and business team. This is less true in primary schools, though many more primary teachers have access via a key or code than in a secondary school. 

4. How many pupils should go to university?

Last Thursday was A-levels day, causing the usual spark of people arguing over the number of young people going into university. Tony Blair was famously laughed at for arguing it should be 50%. But if 50% isn’t the right rate, what is? 

A popular answer was ‘as many as want to go’…

However, we found a difference between newer and older teachers and those in the ‘middle career’ chunk. Both newer and more experienced teachers were less likely to think a high proportion of young people should go to university.

Have we hit peak Higher Education as a nation – and from here our appetite gets less? Don’t tell the universities! It’ll make them cry. 

 

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6. Finally, as ever, we learned that you really love our daily tips, so here are the links for last week:

Right folks – over and out for another week…

In the meantime, keep sharing what we are doing. Here’s a powerpoint slide (with script), a PDF, and a black-and-white one-pager to help. 

Remember, we need more of you before we can do the really exciting and detailed analysis!

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