teachers missed a week what about a week in june

gally74

The teachers have effectivly had an extra week off, in the states teachers have to do a minimum nuber of school days each year come snow hail etc.

why not work an extra week into june!

mikemac

Overall, primary schools in Ireland must be open for a minimum of 183 days in each school year. All schools must close for the months of July and August. Christmas, Easter and mid-term breaks are standardised in both primary and post primary schools.

http://www.citizensinformation.ie/categories/education/primary-and-post-primary-education/going-to-primary-school/primary_education_life_event

I don't know if this lost week brings it below 183 days.
If it does then they will make it up somewhere

And that's for the board of management for the school to decide how to do it
Besides, it wasn't the teachers who decided to close the schools, most reported for work but were sent home

djk1000

They will make it up, schools have to have a certain number of teaching days a year. It's up to the school management to schedule this, schools cant really run into June because it would interfere with state exams.

In my opinion

Primary schools do 183 days per year secondary schools 167.

Rule 60 of primary schools places onus on schools to make up the days they miss, by Board of Management closing the school, for reasons such as no heat, inclement weather etc.

The fact that common sense prevailed and the minister closed schools for next 3 days was totally correct. Schools would have opened on Monday in unsafe circumstances and children would have been put in danger.

Teachers have a role to educate children in a safe environment and in primary school the teacher must put child safety first.

Knock the teachers all you want about money etc but when the safety of people is compromised and the dept take a decision about safety do not use it to bash teachers.

The OP strikes me as being jealous rather than anything else. The States are not by the way the model of education this country should try and follow nor is Britain for that matter. Centrality of the child in Irish education is one they should look at.

spurious

The teachers did not close the schools.

E.T.

gally74 wrote: »

The teachers have effectivly had an extra week off, in the states teachers have to do a minimum nuber of school days each year come snow hail etc.

why not work an extra week into june!

You might want to check your facts - not all schools were closed last week. Our school was open Thursday and Friday, despite burst pipes, flooded classrooms, and only 3 sets of working toilets (boys and girls) between the whole school. We're closed until Thursday by order of Batt O' Keeffe - not our decision or choice. I'm happy enough with the decision seeing as I drove to work Thursday and Friday, plus the other times I went down to the school over Christmas, at between 15-20mph MAX, with my ABS light going crazy the whole way. (Country school, roads haven't been gritted at all and were lethal even before Christmas - local taxis won't take people out there!)

Many primary schools are open until the end of June so your suggestion of working an extra week into June doesn't make sense for most primary schools. Leaving Cert and Junior Cert exams will be taking place in June, I'm pretty sure that these students, and their teachers, wouldn't want the rest of the pupils in the school during these weeks.

If it comes to it, I've no bother making up the days missed, all of my teacher friends/colleagues have said the same. We're not looking at these as days off, more as staying at home rather than putting a load of extra cars on ungritted roads.

Bottle_of_Smoke

My mum's a teacher and said she'll have to make up the days. She's part-time though in a special school, don't know if that makes a difference

Mr. Presentable

gally74 wrote: »

The teachers have effectivly had an extra week off, in the states teachers have to do a minimum nuber of school days each year come snow hail etc.

why not work an extra week into june!

Chip?

Please demonstrate your claim they "had an extra week off". As best I can figure it out, some have had two days off (last Thursday and Friday).

dvpower

In my opinion wrote: »

The fact that common sense prevailed and the minister closed schools for next 3 days was totally correct. Schools would have opened on Monday in unsafe circumstances and children would have been put in danger.

Common sense? I don't know what the conditions are where you are, but in Dublin, most roads are now clear. No reason at all why most schools couldn't open tomorrow morning. The Minister should have made decisions on an area by area basis or delegated this to individual school principals.

In my opinion wrote: »

Teachers have a role to educate children in a safe environment and in primary school the teacher must put child safety first.

True. That's why decisions on opening a school should be made at a local level. A blanket national order to open or close schools cannot properly take local conditions into account.

I had to make alternative childcare arrangements and take my kids there this morning. The kids still had to be transported in the snow. The decision to close their school didn't contribute anything to their safety.

In my opinion wrote: »

Knock the teachers all you want about money etc but when the safety of people is compromised and the dept take a decision about safety do not use it to bash teachers.

True. Nothing at all to do with the teachers. They didn't make the call.

dvpower

Common sense has prevailed.
http://www.rte.ie/news/2010/0111/educationweather.html

The Minister for Education has decided that the normal arrangements whereby schools decide to open or close based on local circumstances should be re-instated.
Schools that are in position to open tomorrow have been told to do so.
Batt O'Keeffe made the decision following an update on the weather given to this morning's meeting of the Government's emergency planning group.

Alcatel

The schools should make up the days, and they have plenty of opportunities to do it throughout the year - how many breaks sit between now and June, even?

I thought I heard rumblings from the INTO early on in the ice and snow that they wouldn't be open to making up the days.

foxymm

So at Midday today, Minister for Education, T.D., Batt O'Keeffe has reverted the decision to close all schools in the State until Thursday and has now placed the onus on individual schools to decide but effectively he stated that those in a position to do so should re-open. I am a teacher myself and when I woke this morning I thought to myself that I should be in teaching today. [although it is snowing again]

However, I think people seem to forget that alot of teachers who live elsewhere in the country will now have to travel to their respective places of work after the lightning decision to re-open. We are still being advise to take care as treacherous conditions still exist.

Listening to the local radio this morning, the manager of the station said it's a ridiculous state of affairs and inappropriate for the Department and schools to have to rely on local radio and other media outlets to hear if schools are going to re-open or not. And so back tothe uncertainty.

Thankfully my school has a webtext service where all staff and parents can find out from the school directly.

What the Dept. needs to do is to create a special section or webpage so that school principals and managers can log-on and inform the public of whether their school is open or not. It's one solution, not the entire remedy.

dvpower

foxymm wrote: »

However, I think people seem to forget that alot of teachers who live elsewhere in the country will now have to travel to their respective places of work after the lightning decision to re-open. We are still being advise to take care as treacherous conditions still exist.

Whatever about teachers, I don't know how he expects local school management to assess the local conditions, make a decision, communicate this decision to staff and then communicate the decision to parents in time to open a school in the morning.

There are going to be a lot of half empty classrooms tomorrow morning.

Overheal

gally74 wrote: »

The teachers have effectivly had an extra week off, in the states teachers have to do a minimum nuber of school days each year come snow hail etc.

why not work an extra week into june!

This is true. Not the case in Ireland, but in the US if you are snowed out or closed down for any reason, the days are made up either at the End of the current school calendar year or the start of the next. So say if you lost 1 week of school for a Hurricane, you'd lose 1 week of your summer. Normally these are for days lost at the County Level.

Makes school times very irregular though. edit: and this varies by state. In WV for instance its handled within the school year and cannot extend past June 5th. Florida though is a lot more fluid due to tropical storms.

Fighting Irish

gally74 wrote: »

The teachers have effectivly had an extra week off, in the states teachers have to do a minimum nuber of school days each year come snow hail etc.

why not work an extra week into june!

:rolleyes:

In my opinion

dvpower wrote: »

Common sense? I don't know what the conditions are where you are, but in Dublin, most roads are now clear. No reason at all why most schools couldn't open tomorrow morning. The Minister should have made decisions on an area by area basis or delegated this to individual school principals.


Delighted that roads in Dublin are clear. West Roscommon can not say the same. This country is an awful lot more than just Dublin.

Shea O'Meara

Jeez...I believe they closed for the kids not the teachers.
If my company closed due to extreme weather and I got a few days off, would I work weekends or take less holidays to make up? Would I f***.
Get real for f*** sake.

dvpower

In my opinion wrote: »

Delighted that roads in Dublin are clear. West Roscommon can not say the same. This country is an awful lot more than just Dublin.

Is that a chip on your shoulder?

I was simply making the point that the decisions should be made locally (including in West Roscommon). I'm glad that the Minister has since come around to my way of thinking.

Evolute

Its a bit unfair if teachers are forced to work the days they had off because the school was closed.
Its not like teachers get paid loads anyways I think a few extra days off because of bad weather is just a perk of the job.
If parents are worried about their kids falling behind then get them to do extra work during the snow days but thats not going to happen so to hell with it leave the teachers to have their extra couple of days cause I wouldnt like their job having to deal with kids like me or when I was a kid.

In my opinion

dvpower wrote: »

Is that a chip on your shoulder?

I was simply making the point that the decisions should be made locally (including in West Roscommon). I'm glad that the Minister has since come around to my way of thinking.

No chip on my shoulder I threw it on the road for grip many days ago!

killbillvol2

dvpower wrote: »

Is that a chip on your shoulder?

I was simply making the point that the decisions should be made locally (including in West Roscommon). I'm glad that the Minister has since come around to my way of thinking.

I'm sure the Minister wouldn't make any decisions without ascertaining your way of thinking first. :rolleyes:

As regards communicating decisions, believe it or not schools now use such complicated and new-fangled things as email and text messages to alert parents.

994

They have to make up the days, they always do. One day at midterm, two at Easter and two in July, or something like that.

And it's odd that you're more annoyed by teachers getting paid for fewer days than children missing out on learning.

dvpower

killbillvol2 wrote: »

As regards communicating decisions, believe it or not schools now use such complicated and new-fangled things as email and text messages to alert parents.

Pfft. Not the school that my kid goes to.

E.T.

We don't use email to contact parents because there's no guarantee that people will check email daily. Texting is also a bit dodgy - you wouldn't believe the amount of people who change their contact numbers on a regular basis (why?) so you can't check that the message is going to the right person. We update the contact list every year and there's still a few times a year when I have to ring parents when their child is sick and it ends up being an out of service number. We rang all parents yesterday - don't know how the other staff got on but I had one out of service home number on my list. We're doing the best we can, but if people don't keep the school updated it's impossible to contact everyone.

dvpower

my kid's schools' preferred means of communication is a note in her schoolbag, which obviously doesn't work for the current situation.

They didn't attempt to contact me about the school reopening. Tbh, that's fair enough; they have a few hundred students, its hard to expect them to contact everybody. A simple message on the school website would suffice. Unfortunately, my kid's school doesn't even have a website.:(

E.T.

Would you get in touch with them tomorrow and let them know you want some means of communication to be set up? You can go to the school directly or get in contact with someone on the parents' association or board of management. The situation at the moment really is unprecedented but it might be a good time to get text a parent or something like that set up. I'm working in a much smaller school so ringing parents is feasible, but if there's a few hundred kids in the school then that idea is too complicated and some other scheme needs to be put in place.

straricco

dvpower wrote: »

I had to make alternative childcare arrangements and take my kids there this morning. The kids still had to be transported in the snow. The decision to close their school didn't contribute anything to their safety.

Alternative childcare arrangments - its like this is not even considered, parents need to then payout for a full day of childcare. Until I had my 6 yr old daughter I guess I never considered this either. My mother is a recently retired teacher so I can see both sides of arguement. But at the end of the day, I don't agree with all the holidays teachers have, for example the may & june bank hol wkds, in my daughters school they are also taking the tuesday, I presume to use up their extra days. Where's the fairness in that? It makes me so mad esp when you consider all the other hols they have.

#15

straricco wrote: »

But at the end of the day, I don't agree with all the holidays teachers have, for example the may & june bank hol wkds, in my daughters school they are also taking the tuesday, I presume to use up their extra days. Where's the fairness in that? It makes me so mad esp when you consider all the other hols they have.

What do you mean by fairness?

If you're annoyed that they have more holidays than the average private sector worker.....

Those days that the school will be taking at the bank holiday weekends are not just extra days off. Your child will be in school for those two days at another time in the year. Those days are discretionary days.

dvpower

E.T. wrote: »

Would you get in touch with them tomorrow and let them know you want some means of communication to be set up?

Yeah. I guess I'd get further if I took it up with the school rather than the internet.:)

straricco wrote: »

Alternative childcare arrangments - its like this is not even considered, parents need to then payout for a full day of childcare. Until I had my 6 yr old daughter I guess I never considered this either. My mother is a recently retired teacher so I can see both sides of arguement. But at the end of the day, I don't agree with all the holidays teachers have, for example the may & june bank hol wkds, in my daughters school they are also taking the tuesday, I presume to use up their extra days. Where's the fairness in that? It makes me so mad esp when you consider all the other hols they have.

It wasn't the teachers who closed the schools (they do get a lot of holidays, but thats a different story). My problem was with the Minister who didn't seem to appreciate that there were nearly a million parents who were discommoded by his decisions.

straricco

#15 wrote: »

What do you mean by fairness?

If you're annoyed that they have more holidays than the average private sector worker.....

Those days that the school will be taking at the bank holiday weekends are not just extra days off. Your child will be in school for those two days at another time in the year. Those days are discretionary days.

No not annoyed they have more holidays than average private worker, more that it affects my bank balance. I feel that they take so many "discertionary" days apart from the summer, midterms, xmas, easter hols. Not the teachers fault its the systems fault, but from my point of view it means that I have to fork out for extra childcare. The whole teachers holidays system needs to be revised. Easter hols its 2 whole weeks off, its absolutely ridiculous. Week of full childcare will cost me €195 so obviously I'm not going to welcome it!

#15

straricco wrote: »

No not annoyed they have more holidays than average private worker, more that it affects my bank balance. I feel that they take so many "discertionary" days apart from the summer, midterms, xmas, easter hols. Not the teachers fault its the systems fault, but from my point of view it means that I have to fork out for extra childcare. The whole teachers holidays system needs to be revised. Easter hols its 2 whole weeks off, its absolutely ridiculous. Week of full childcare will cost me €195 so obviously I'm not going to welcome it!

So you want your children in school more, not for educational reasons, but to save you on childcare? Come on. I have sympathy for your position but its not the job of the state to look after your children.
I find that kids, especially smaller kids, need the break from school because they get so tired towards the end of each term.

If there is an educational argument for changing the holiday system, I'm all ears.

As it is, Primary teachers in Ireland work more hours than teachers in many countries.