Hey there Teacher Tappers!
Goodness me, the term is nearly over! It might not feel like it right now, but you’re nearing the end…the finish line is in sight!
New Prize Draw! 🎟️
Big news – we are in the final week of our June Prize Draw 🥳. One lucky teacher will win £500 to splurge on a Summer Holiday Day Out ☀️🗺️.
To earn a ticket, answer questions for four days in a row. You can see these tickets in your app under prize draw. Collect as many as you can before the 30th June. On 1st July we will announce the winner.
You don’t need to do anything to collect your tickets (we do that for you!). If you have given us permission, we will email you every time you are awarded a ticket.
When we announce the winner, check your tickets for a special code. We’ll share the winning ticket code on our social channels, and we’ll email the winner too. For full terms and conditions, take a look here.
General election and vote switching
There is just over a week to go before schools transform into polling stations so the electorate can cast their votes! 🗳️
Enter…the Great Teacher Tapper Party Tracker 🥳
If the general election was called tomorrow, 58% would vote for Labour, 13% Liberal Democrat, 3% Conservative, 2% Reform and 16% still haven’t made their mind up.
Things have moved a little since our last checked; so where are the switchers switching from and to? 🧐
Labour have lost some votes to the Liberal Democrats and Greens – but also to the ‘Don’t Knows’. Unsure folks are one percentage point higher than last time, though that’s within our expected random variations so don’t read too much into it.
In case you missed it – we have our blog with the results of our comparative judgement experiment ranking the election policies of all parties here.
The Summer Behaviour Curve
In the summer term behaviour in secondary schools typically improves 😌 possibly because there’s fewer students after exams.
And good news! That is exactly what the data has shown again this year 🥳.
In fact, both primary and secondary have had a three percentage point improvement in disruptive behaviour.
This June, just over a third of secondary teachers (35%) and 43% of primary teachers said learning stopped completely due to poor behaviour.
However, it isn’t ALL good news. For primary the figure is still a fair bit worse than this time last year – 43% vs 37%. (For secondary things are looking slightly better than last year, thankfully).
We’ve had a suspicion for a while that things seem to be worsening in primary more than in secondary. The graph below shows the question “In the last lesson you taught, was there any time you felt teaching and learning largely stopped because of poor behaviour?” Teachers who say ‘yes’ are shown on the graph.
As you can see, before the pandemic, secondary (purple) and primary (green) had about the same rates of learning disruption. But since the pandemic, the primary sector has pulled ahead and appears to be staying there. Theories abound as to why this is but it’s difficult to disaggregate exactly what at the moment. Certainly it’s something we will be keeping an eye on and trying to see what else we can say.
How is behaviour in your school at the moment? Let us know on socials or through the app… 💭💬
Gained time: who decides?
Primary, if you’re not interested in this bit – the next section is for you!
In secondary schools, the hours spent slogging away with your exam classes should be paid off with gained time – e.g. free periods where a teacher previously taught Year 11 or 13. But is that always the case?
This week a teacher got in touch to ask “What will happen during gained time?”. She was interested because in her school all gained time was managed by their head of department who gave projects to do during it.
But how common is that set up? 🧐
- 56% of teachers are free to choose how they used gained time.
- 42% are directed by line managers.
- 6% give their line managers an outline of what they’re planning to do.
We also discovered that 17% of you either have timetable changes or students move ‘up’ so gained time goes to those who will have Year 7 in September rather than those who had exam classes.
However – not all departments adopt the same approach: Science teachers 🧬 were the most likely to be told what they have to do by their line manager (56%) and humanities teachers 🗺️ ⛪︎ are the most likely to be given total freedom.
KS1 Sats gone but not…really?
Although KS1 Sats are no longer compulsory in primary schools, the DfE left an option to order the tests and use them for end of key stage assessments.
Last year, less than a quarter you thought Sats would running in your school in 2024.
So – what happened in the end? 68% ordered the Sat papers and 42% used them in May.
So, what does this tell us about the state of assessment in primary schools? Schools may be ordering the tests because they save time. Writing your own assessments and mark schemes can be a hassle, so schools default to the ease of pre-prepared ones.
Another reason is comparability. Using the same tests year after year makes it simpler to compare results and track progress, something which remains important.
What do you think? Were you one of the schools hoping to ditch the tests but kept them? If you could design any assessment for KS1, what would it look like? Share your thoughts with us! 💬
Top events
This week’s top event is ResearchEd and their in-person National Conference 2024 for the THIRD time!! 😍🤩🥳.
So we have to also mention the FFT’s Reading Quest our second most popular event 🎉.
Every single day we’re adding events so be sure to check the app to see all the new events on offer.
Ups and Downs
On the rise 📈
Lesson observations Lesson observations are on the up. 37% of you said you have had someone observe a lesson ‘this academic year’ up from 27% last year.
Heading down 📉
Marking for 3+ hours Great news! Those pulling long shifts on marking are seeing respite now it’s summer. Compared to November, secondary teachers marking for more than three hours has dropped (42% down from 52%) and primary teachers has dropped too (40% down from 47%).
Daily Reads
Our most read daily read this week was our special Teacher Tapp blog: Ranking the Education Policies.
If you would like to read the rest you can find them here 👇
