ARmy Rumour SErvice

Oh do bloody behave.

He's a teacher he teaches kids, and happens to be in the TA. The primary responsibility is to his employer, and the kids and their education. Teaching time is limited, and what with inset days, half terms, etc etc I'd feel miffed if you were taking one of my kids' teachers for a fortnight. Even more miffed if that time was now during intensive GCSE or A level periods.

The Governors are quite right.

Originally Posted by Dr_Evil

I absolutely love it, too. If working in education is incompatible with being in the reserve forces, schools should man up and say so outright, and publicly.

It troubles me that being a teacher can be compatible with trade union activity, school governorship, etc., and schools can work around that. But reserve forces activity somehow presents a drama.

A planned absence of two weeks can be worked around by engaging a supply teacher, no?

Finally, it's not as if this particular fella chose the dates on which his unit decided to do annual camp.

If the MoD would fund the supply teacher then it may work but the other activities are sadly germane to the running of a normal school whereas plying pretend sandpits in brecon to prepare yourself for the previous governments dusty adventures isnt anything that will help the school.
You see it can also be counterproductive think of all the counselling costs for the precious dears affected bySirs abscence!
And I'm not fucking joking on that either!

Originally Posted by Nornironman

Teaching time is limited, and what with inset days, half terms, etc etc

You missed strike action and snow.

Whilst mandatory TA training might be good and well from a TA perspective, I suspect it would prove to be deterimental to how the TA is seen by employers in general.

Its difficult enough as it is for some companies to manage staff holidays, dictating to employers when they need to release their staff for TA outside of an existential threat to UK PLC isn't going to be popular. I've seen that some employment contracts prohibit additional paid part-time or casual jobs, if TA training was mandatory i'd expect to see these contracts becoming the norm. The rationale being that they're paying someone a full time salary, don't want their efforts focussed elsewhere, and generally want staff to spend time away from work recouperating... for instance, a former boss of mine didn't approve of me taking two weeks paid holiday for a TA course to come back twice as knackered as when I left rather than rested and recharged. People often forget that your employers are still paying for you when you're on holiday, and employers don't have to give unpaid holiday.

What sort of school is it? If it's local authority maintained they usually have a County policy which will include time-off for annual camp. From what I recall it's two weeks, but it's not my area of expertise, just something that I recall cropping up in the past.

There are 190 teaching days in a year + 5 Baker days for staff training. Not a bad little number is it, especially when you take the number of 'free periods' during the day too?

Originally Posted by Dr_Evil

I absolutely love it, too. If working in education is incompatible with being in the reserve forces, schools should man up and say so outright, and publicly.

It troubles me that being a teacher can be compatible with trade union activity, school governorship, etc., and schools can work around that. But reserve forces activity somehow presents a drama.

A planned absence of two weeks can be worked around by engaging a supply teacher, no?
Finally, it's not as if this particular fella chose the dates on which his unit decided to do annual camp.

so they have to shell out for a substitute teacher? that's not going to sell it to them. if you're a head teacher you're not going to give a shit about the state of the countries reserve forces and will just trumpet the spare time bit. personally the years i wasnt a scumbag student i always had to take annual leave to attend camp because my employer was in no way obligated to give me time off and to be honest i agreed with them.

Teachers aren't the only people who struggle to get time off for TA Training - so why should they be treated any differently?