👋 Hi Tappsters, we wanted to start this weeks blog off by wishing those of you on half term a happy half term 🥳
We understand that it’s important for you to switch off during the holidays so if you’ve missed some Teacher Tapp questions and lost your streak, just drop us in an in-app message via contact us and we’ll restore it for you as soon as possible 🥰
On to this weeks results…
1. Primary Teachers, We Need You ❤️
We’re going to be honest with you, we’re aiming to get more Primary Tappers to join us on Teacher Tapp.
There, we said it – PHEW!
We recently recruited Sushana, our Community Manager, to help us achieve this goal – she was a primary teacher for seven years up until she joined us in April 2022 (she says she’s got the grey hair to prove it!)
So, to all you primary Tappers out there, if you’ve got any suggestions (no matter how crazy they might sound), pop her over an email at sushana@teachertapp.co.uk with your ideas about how we can spread the Teacher Tapp love to more primary teachers – she loves a good whiteboard mind map 🙄
2. Tattoo or Taboo?
Last week, we asked if your staff dress code included guidance on staff tattoos, a question we last asked in 2019.
27% of you said YES, your staff dress code does include guidance on staff tattoos, although that’s over a quarter of you, it’s 9 percentage points less than in 2019.
Are schools becoming more relaxed on the tattoo front? 🧐
It certainly appears that way…
We then asked if you thought that somebody who has a visible tattoo on their hand should be allowed to become a teacher. We found a similar result to when we last asked in 2019.
In 2022, 88% of you said YES, they should be allowed to become a teacher, compared to 84% in 2019.
This got us wondering ‘who is saying yes?’ and some of our Twitter followers were asking us ‘who is saying no?’ 🤔
Well, we’ve got some answers…
Let’s start with who’s saying ‘yes’ 👍
We found that 90% of classroom teachers said ‘yes’ compared to 85% of headteachers who said the same. Were you expecting this difference to be greater than 5%? Some of us at HQ were! 😧 (Although we’re happy it’s not!)
12% of senior leaders and headteachers were supportive but would want the hand tattoos covering. Again, this was only marginally more than classroom teachers (8%) and middle leaders (10%).
So, who’s saying ‘no’? 🥁
Well, 4% of senior leaders and 3% of middle leaders were the ones who were most likely to say ‘no’.
Call us sceptical but we wondered if the small percentage of senior leaders and middle leaders who said ‘no’ held the aspiration of becoming a headteacher themselves one day and perhaps felt that ‘no’ would be the expected answer to this question.
We had a look… 👀
It turns out, there’s no correlation whatsoever and it’s likely to just be a matter of personal opinion! Well, we tried 😳
The good news is, if you’ve got tattoos or intend to get one, even if it’s on your hand, you’re in a better position in 2022 than you would’ve been in 2019!
3. Where’s the Jubilee party at? 🥳
With the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee approaching, last week we asked if you had any Jubilee celebrations planned at school.
90% of primary teachers said that you DID have celebrations planned compared to only 25% of secondary teachers. Given the upcoming secondary exams, it’s likely that secondary teachers had bigger fish to fry last week and understandably so 🐠
So the parties were happening in primary schools! We’re assuming that our invites got lost in the cloud ☁️ (we forgive you!)
4. TechNOlogy
‘Here’s a video of… oh no, please wait, the computers decided to reboot itself MID OBSERVATION!‘ 😫
The ex-teachers here at Teacher Tapp HQ are still haunted by the impeccable timing of tech issues in the classroom 👻
So last Thursday, we asked if technology had failed you at any point during the day, a question we’ve asked twice in 2018 and once in 2020.
35% of you said that you had experienced at least one technology mishap that day 🙄 Although that’s over a quarter of you, it’s still 13 percentage points less than when we first asked in 2018. The trend paints an optimistic picture, with a steady decline of technology fails between 2018 and 2022.
Admittedly, this question only asks about one day, perhaps if we asked over the course of a half term or ‘this week’ we’d be able to see if technology in schools really is getting better or it’s simply the luck of the draw. 🍀
5. SEND
Last week, we asked you to think about the last lesson in which you taught a pupil with SEND and tell us which of the options were true for some/all of those pupils.
We analysed the results by phase and found some relatively significant, yet explainable, differences between the experiences of primary and secondary teachers.
Let’s dive in… 🤿
Only 14% of secondary teachers designed a task specifically for pupils with SEND compared to 39% of primary teachers.
We found that secondary teachers are more likely to create resources that help pupils with SEND work more independently (32%) as opposed to designing a task specifically for them (14%).
Primary teachers are more likely to do both, 57% and 39% respectively. 🤔
Are secondary-age pupils with SEND more likely to be taught in classes where the lesson content is more closely matched to their abilities? Perhaps.
Do primary teachers often have more mixed abilities in their class so are required to differentiate up or down to meet the needs of pupils with SEND in their classes? Perhaps.
We then asked if specific events occurred during the same lesson and there was a stark difference between the phases.
Half of primary teachers said that a SEND pupil’s behaviour disrupted the learning of other pupils and 40% said that the pupil with SEND struggled to access the set task 😧
It could be argued that these two factors correlate, if any pupil is unable or unwilling to access the task they’ve been given, behaviour tends to stray. It’s a tricky one to navigate in the classroom on a daily basis!
It’s quite sad that 34% of primary teachers and 18% of secondary teachers said that you felt that you were unable to provide enough support for SEND pupils during the lesson 😔 More questions to dig into this coming soon.
Remember, you can only do so much and every single day you make the world of difference to the pupils in your classrooms 🥰
6. MfL in Primary Schools
We told you we’re on Primary teacher pleasing mission 🚀 Let’s hope it doesn’t end in 🔥
Last week, we asked Primary Tappers if all pupils learn the same language at their school.
There was a clear winner across the board, French 🇫🇷
We’ll be honest, this finding has been the topic of some conversation here at HQ.
We thought that German might be more popular than the results showed.
Why? Because it’s one of the closest languages to English, or so we’ve been led to believe 🤨 Having said that, the ‘Ich habe ein pony’ song is the only thing that I remember from GCSE German so maybe not (anyone with me there? 👀).
Spanish is the most popular language to learn in schools in the most deprived areas (36%) compared to the most affluent schools (17%). Again, we were under the impression that Spanish may be more difficult to learn – but what do we know?
Ich habe zwei pudle 🇩🇪
7. Teacher Lunches (or lack of) 🥪
Last Thursday, we asked where you ate your lunch that day 🍱
Before we get to the results we apologise for not including options like corridors, the playground or whilst hanging upside down – we’ve got limited space but we certainly felt your pain on Twitter 🤗
We understand that eating your lunch is dependant upon the days events, so a bit like our technology question, it’s likely that these findings are more of a reflection of the kind of day that you’d had.
If you prefer to eat your lunch in the staffroom, you’re more likely to have this opportunity in an affluent primary school.
What we can say is that the canteen is where you’re least likely to find the teacher you’ve been looking for at lunchtime regardless of whether you’re in a primary or secondary school!
Finally… we know you love the daily read, so here are the ones from last week
The most read tip from the past week was: Are highlighters beneficial when studying?
And here are the rest for your reference:
