Hello Teacher Tappers!
This week you’ve all been a VERY busy bunch of teachers with golden tickets flying out all over the place for our March prize draw 🥳.
Not sure if you’re in the draw? 🤔 Well, if you have answered 20 questions since March the 1st, you’ll definitely have a ticket 🙌 check your app to see how many you have, and how many questions to go before you get your next!
On April 2nd we will be drawing the winning ticket and announcing the Teacher Tapper who will be the proud owner of TEN umbrellas for break duty, bus duty, rainy PE lessons and any other time you’re outside and in need of shelter! ☔️
Why it’s workload rather than pay
This week the Teacher Tapp genie 🧞♂️ was out and about, and this time you were being granted a 10% increase in funding – rejoice! 💰
However, the catch was the whole lot could only be spent on one thing 😆 so…what did you choose?
Overall, more of you tapped to say “more staff” either classroom teachers or TAs – and this was particularly pronounced when we looked at those of you who are senior leaders and headteachers:
Perhaps the most notable finding here is the preference for non-teaching staff over classroom staff – and this doesn’t come as a surprise given the reported recruitment struggles for support staff.
Of course, there is the argument that those of you voting to increase staff wages did so because you thought this would help with the retention and recruitment of teachers – let us know what your rationale was for whatever you voted for on the socials or through the app! 🗣️
How much time do you spend planning on the weekend?
Planning lessons can take a huge amount of time…but how many of you used your Saturday and Sundays to do it?
The answer is – an awful lot of you! 😩
The good news – if you have ever harboured grudges against teachers in other phases that they might have less planning…well, maybe it’s time to drop that grudge…
As you can see – there is very little to pick between your answers here. Primary and secondary alike – planning workloads look the same.
But what about changing subject? Well, that doesn’t look that great either 🤷🏽.
Maths had the least amount of teachers tapping “no time” but just a quick glance at this table and you might conclude it’s better the devil you know.
Following the behaviour policy
It’s a common complaint of classroom teachers – you’re trying to teach a class and enforcing the behaviour policy when they’ve come straight from a lesson with a teacher who doesn’t enforce it.
But look how many more of you are following the behaviour policy if you’ve been in the classroom a longer time:
How much does the role you have in a school come into this though? Well, we checked, and even looking at classroom teachers only, the longer you’ve been in the classroom, the more likely you are to follow the behaviour policy ‘all of the time’.
However – it would be wrong to talk about following the behaviour policy WITHOUT also looking at what behaviour teachers are seeing.
Fortunately, we asked you about that this week too…
As you can see – pretty consistently there has been an increase in all types of challenging behaviour. So although there are inconsistencies with following the behaviour policy, it’s also clear the volume of behaviour issues is MUCH higher than it was two years ago.
However – when looking at these numbers it’s always important to look at the time of the year the question was asked. Do you think the time of year makes a difference? It could just be that you’re less likely to have fights in November or July compared to March.
What do YOU think is behind this difference? Share your theories with us online or in the app…💬.
Lunchbreaks
School dinners have hit the headlines this week due to their varying quality – however, when we looked at the results from your taps about lunch break lengths, we noticed this trend:
There is a massive 11 percentage point gap between those in the most affluent schools receiving an hour-long lunch break, and only those of you in private schools reported a lunch break extending beyond the 75-minute mark (however – worth noting that the school day is likely to also be longer outside of the state sector).
Of course – how many of you get to actually eat your lunch in that lunch break is another question entirely 🙃
Ups and Downs
On the rise 📈
Powerpoint (and other presentation software…): This week a whopping 73% of you told us you used presentation software in your lessons. This has been a steady rise from 54% in 2018.
Heading down 📉
Longer break times: The number of you telling us you have a break time longer than 20 minutes has dropped over the years – and last week the lowest number ever said they had a break time that lasted more than 20 minutes.
Daily Reads
Our most read daily read this week was the blog: Why The Bear is like working in schools by @southgloshead
If you would like to read the rest you can find them here 👇
