1. Half Term Roundup 🤠
For those of you who were on half term last week, we hope you’re feeling well rested and ready for the final half term of this academic year 🏃♀️
Last week, we asked if a week off was long enough at this point in the academic year. We found that 77% of you were happy with a week off 🥳
59% of primary Tappers would’ve preferred two weeks off compared to 46% of their secondary counterparts who felt the same. We’re sorry that we don’t have the power to grant you this wish! 🧞♂️
Here at Teacher Tapp HQ we wondered which age-range were most happy with a week off so we analysed the results.
It turns out, the older you are, the more likely you were to be happy with a week off 🙌
We found similar results from teachers in their 30s and 40s with 38% and 39% of you respectively, being happy with a week off!
In comparison, 32% of teachers in their 20s were happy with a week off but 60% of you said that you could’ve done with two weeks off 🏖
With the extended bank holiday falling in half term, we asked some questions about your Jubilee plans, both in and out of school.
We’ll start with in-school Jubilee plans, 37% of primary teachers said that your pupils had learnt the National Anthem compared to 2% of secondary teachers who said that their pupils had done the same. Is this because they already know it? 🤔
We asked if you were joining a Jubilee street party over the bank holiday 👀
Primary teachers were more likely to be attending a Jubilee street party with 23% of you receiving invites and saying you’d be there, 19% of secondary teachers said the same. We hope you had a good time, those of you who did attend!
We felt as though this question deserved some further analysis to find out who was least likely to be invited to a street party 😉
We found that science and maths teachers were the least likely to get invited to a street party 😳 But, only marginally!!
Does this ring true for the science and maths teachers at your school? Surely not…
Arts including D&T and teachers of other subjects were the most likely to get an invite and take up the offer – are you the cool kids? 😎
2. Education Influencers 🤳
Last week, we asked which organisation you felt has the most influence on the way your school operates day-to-day out of a list of the DfE, Regional Schools Commissioner, Local authority, Ofsted, Ofqual and the Standards and Testing Agency 👀
Overall, Ofsted came out as having the biggest influence but we wondered if this had changed since we last asked in 2018?
So, we had a look…
We found a 3 percentage point decrease in the DfE being the most influential but a 6 percentage point increase in Ofsted.
Could this be due to the implementation of the new Ofsted Framework in September 2019? 🤔
Watch this space for the 2023 results 👀
Will it rise again?
We were expecting that classroom teachers would’ve chosen Ofsted more than any other role in school but we were surprised…
When we analysed the 2022 results, we found that 62% of middle leaders said that Ofsted has the most influence on day-to-day operations, compared to 56% of classroom teachers!
Well, that gave us a slice of humble pie 🍰
Whilst no organisation tops Ofsted for influence, we did notice that the more senior your role in school, the more likely you were to select the DfE as being most influential. We guess headteachers are still feeling the pain of the numerous emails DfE sent during lockdown 😔
We also checked the results based on whether your school is in a MAT or under LA control and found that whilst Local Authorities influence LA schools, the same can’t be said for Regional Schools Commissioners and academies 💁♀️
3. Hypothetical Cheaters 🫣
In an attempt to have a bit of half-term fun, we asked if your students could purchase their exam papers in advance (£5 each), how many do you think would cheat?
This made us laugh on Twitter 😂
Without asking students themselves, we can’t say or even speculate how many of them would actually cheat in this way. But, we can at least look at their teachers opinions…
Let’s start with secondary teachers…
Well, the vast majority of you believe that your students would cheat to varying degrees, ranging from a few of your students all the way up to all of them.
We analysed the results by age and found that younger teachers are more distrustful!
We reworded this question slightly for primary and used the word ‘assessments’ and ‘pupils’ (in response to a question we recently asked about how you refer to children at school).
We intended for the former change to accommodate for age-specific primary assessments e.g. phonics screening check, spelling tests etc. In hindsight, and thanks to our Twitter followers, we should’ve asked about parents being willing to cheat rather than pupils but it’s noted for next time 😊
Having said that, primary teachers were more likely to believe that none of their pupils would cheat in this way.
Admittedly, the disparity between the primary and secondary results could largely be a reflection of the interpretation in primary schools that pupils wouldn’t cheat but their parents might.
4. Primary Jubilee Book
The DfE recently said that they’d be sending a commemorative Jubilee book to all primary schools in the UK. Here’s an illustration from the book..
So, we asked primary Tappers if your school had received yours yet.
Only 14% of you said that you’d received your copy and 61% of you said that were yet to receive yours.
Interestingly, a quarter of you responded with ‘what Jubilee book?’ 🤔
We made a joke on Twitter that the missing books may be in the same place as those air purifier units 🙊 Nevertheless, it’s a nice touch from the DfE and hopefully you’ll receive yours before your pupils forget what the Jubilee was all about!
5. Teachers are AMAZING people ❤️
Last week, we asked if you’d temporarily foster a child from your class.
We already know that teachers are amazing people but when results like this come in, we can’t help but smile and be in awe of you even more.
62% of primary teachers said YES and 44% of secondary teachers said the same 😍
Get your spades out because we dug a little deeper!
We analysed the results by teacher age and found a pattern 🙌 (we love patterns). We found that the younger the teacher the more likely they were to respond ‘yes’ to this question.
Take a look… 👀
Becky, our co-founder, wondered if already having children at home may played a role in these responses.
So, we did what most people do when their boss ‘wonders’ something and we had a look 👏
It turns out that 46% of you who do have children at home still said yes to temporarily fostering a child from your class, compared to 58% of you who don’t have children at home. A 12 percentage point difference here only further highlights the great people that teachers are ❤️
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: Teaching techniques that boost exam performance
And here are the rest for your reference:
