Hey there Tappers
We hope the Bank Holiday gave you a chance to unwind – 44% of you saw family and friends – but we can’t NOT mention the fact 40% also spent the day doing school work 😢. This is the tough part of teaching that those outside the profession forget: holidays that others take for granted are not always work-free time.
But some good news – we checked in on our slang tracker and fewer teachers were reporting hearing 6-7, compared to when we asked in December or October. 68% of primary teachers said they heard it, DOWN from 92% in December, and 68% of secondary teachers heard it, DOWN from 88% in December. It looks like that highly irritating trend is on its way out.
Return of the prize draw 🤑
🎉 Our prize draw is back for May – and once again, there are no ticket codes to worry about!
If you tap at least once between 1 – 31 May, you’ll automatically be entered. The winner will see a message in the app from 2 June.
And there’s more: any Teacher Tappers who have the same school listed in their profile as the winner, and who also tapped between 1–31 May, will receive gift cards too.
Will we see even more winners this month?
You can check the full terms and conditions here.
Ofsted – how is the new framework received among teachers?
This new school year saw the start of the updated Ofsted framework inspections. Out went single-word judgments and deep dives, and in came scorecards and more areas to be inspected.
But do teachers feel the new framework provides fairer inspections? Sadly not. The number of teachers who disagree that their inspection outcome was fair has almost doubled. 9% of teachers who were last inspected before 2025 disagreed that their inspection outcome was fair; this has jumped up to 17% for teachers inspected under the new framework.
As well as a change in the number of teachers feeling the outcome was fair, teachers who have experienced inspections under the old AND new framework told us they felt inspections under the new framework were more stressful.
Almost half of school leaders felt the new style was more stressful (47%), and nearly a third of teachers felt the same (32%).
One explanation for this might be that the new framework itself caused feelings of stress. After all, any change with unknown elements will feel stressful.
The next future complication for schools will be the enrichment benchmarks, where schools will be judged by the opportunities offered to students in their school as part of their Ofsted inspection. At the moment, the details of these benchmarks have yet to be released, giving leaders very little time to plan for the new academic year.
Keep an eye out for more Ofsted questions over the next few weeks.
Teacher content creators
If you spend more than three minutes on TikTok, you will soon come across videos clearly shot in classrooms, and sometimes those videos will even contain the voices or faces of children.
But how many schools have rules about filming for social media in the classroom? Whether or not you know the answer may well depend on your role: teaching staff were much more likely not to know the answer to that question (52% vs 17%), and were also much less likely to believe it wasn’t permitted (27% vs 49%).
This gap is understandable; after all, classroom teachers are juggling an enormous amount, and policy communication doesn’t always filter through as effectively as schools would like. But it does suggest there may be schools where filming restrictions exist on paper without being widely understood in practice.
It’s also worth acknowledging that 28% of senior leaders don’t yet have a policy in place at all, which, given how quickly the social media landscape has changed, is perhaps not surprising. For those schools, now is a good moment to think about what guidance would work for your setting: what can be filmed, under what circumstances, and how that footage can be shared.
Teacher Tapper asked…are teachers allowed tattoos?
This weekend we asked our tattoo questions – a firm Tapper favourite, as every time we ask our social media normally gets inundated with lots of photos of body art!
But what did we find out? Here are our best tat stats:
- About a quarter of teachers are tattooed (28%).
- Tattoos are more common with teachers in their 20s and 30s, compare to those in 40s+ (33% vs 24%)
- 3% say they have tattoos relating to either teaching or their subject.
- When it comes to rules, 28% of teachers say their school includes tattoos in its dress code.
My favourite tattoo sent in was one depicting a teacher at their visualiser! If you have a teaching tattoo you would like to show off, please send it in! Find us on insta or TikTok @teachertapp.
Behaviour tracker for ECTs 📉
Our behaviour tracker has zoomed in on the experience for ECTs this week, and we have good news!
At the start of the year, the gap between behaviour in lessons for ECTs vs non-ECT classroom teachers is huge: December saw a 16 percentage point gap with 58% of ECTs experiencing behaviour so disruptive learning stopped, compared to 42% of non-ECT classroom teachers.
But the good news is that since the new year, it’s been closing: 13, 9, 8 and now 4 percentage points.
The message for ECTs is clear: although it can be really tough when you’re in the middle of the storm, this chart proves that newer teachers will see their behaviour management rapidly improve, and if things feel really tough around the end of the Autumn term, if you can hold on, it all starts to pick up.
Daily Reads
With Sats coming up, it’s no wonder the number one blog was all about the possible words that will feature on the tests!
There are so many great blogs out there and we love featuring them on Teacher Tapp. If you have a blog you think we should feature, then please email us at england@teachertapp.co.uk and we will check it out!
