Hello teacher tappsters!
It’s the final week of the Golden Tickets! On Friday we will be drawing the winning ticket for our £1,000 Teacher Tapp prize draw. Check your app to find out how many tickets you’ve got…and how many questions to go until you’re awarded another! 🥳
Between now and Thursday you still have time to rack up more tickets – every twenty questions you answer will give you one ticket. It’s all done automatically for you, so sit back and wait to see if you are the lucky Teacher Tapper who has their ticket chosen.
Would you want to become an Ofsted inspector?
This week we asked about your Ofsted ambitions – a question we’ve put to you many times before.
This month we’ve seen the highest ever proportion of teachers saying ‘definitely no’ to becoming an inspector.
Does experience make a difference? Yes. Teachers who have spent more than 20 years in the classroom more commonly say ‘definitely no’ (58%). However, teachers with between 5 and 20 years experience are the most likely to consider either part time inspection roles, or swapping the classroom for a career in Ofsted full time.
Pass, fail, or something else?
Sometimes we ask you questions, and the answer you want to give us isn’t there for you to tap!
This seemed to be the case when we asked you about the Ofsted grading system. We repeated a question from 2018 in which you were offered a choice between the current 4 grade system or a pass/fail system.
33% of you said keep the grading system and 47% of you said move to pass/fail – but 20% of you went for ‘not sure/can’t answer’.
This is the most ‘not sure/can’t answer’ we’ve had since starting the question in 2018. Looking at the socials and feedback, it sounds like this is because you felt the option of ‘no grading at all’ should have been on there.
Does it make a difference if your current school is rated as ‘outstanding’, ‘good’ or ‘RI/inadequate’?
Intersestingly it was the teachers in schools currently rated as RI who were slightly more likely to opt for the current 4 grade system – but also the most likely to opt for ‘cannot answer’.
Primary experiences
Once you’ve waded through all the risk assessments paperwork, school trips and external speakers are a great way to give your pupils experiences that increase their cultural capital…and, well, provide a lot of fun.
We can see that 98% of primary teachers have plans for their class to undertake enrichment activities – and over a third will be taking pupils on a trip that involves an overnight stay.
But the sorts of trips you’re planning varies depending on where you are.
Primary students in Yorkshire and the North East are more likely to go and watch a performance off school grounds (44 per cent) whereas those in the South East are more likely to have the performance in school.
Meanwhile, primary students in London are far more likely to walk to their visit destination (75 per cent) than in other parts of the country., while those in Yorkshire and North East are most likely to go on a day trip via a vehicle.
When it comes to schools with more affluent pupils, there are small differences in responses. Although there was an increase in the use of coaches in trips, and a slightly higher number of pupils offered residential trips – overall the difference between schools with more affluent pupils versus schools with more deprived pupils was very small.
Eat, drink and be merry
The teacher’s workroom is a quasi-sacred place, but with space in secondary schools in high demand, it isn’t always possible to have a room big enough to fit the team, or even to have a room at all.
The good news is that since 2022, the number of you using a department office has stayed pretty constant – and probably more constant than your ability to stick to the coffee/tea rota.
However, when we look at schools with higher numbers of affluent pupils, we can see far more of you are telling us you meet in your department office, and less likely to use a teaching room (11% in most affluent schools vs 20% in most deprived schools).
What is also interesting to note – 25% of Teacher Tappers in schools with an RI or inadequate Ofsted grading say they don’t regularly meet as a department during the school day.
And if you’re wondering how this changes by subject, science teachers are the least likely to have a space where they meet socially and arts teachers are the most likely. We know from other Teacher Tapp questions that science teachers are less likely to have their own classrooms, so they move around the school more, and they also tend to have more strict rules around eating/drinking in their spaces too – maybe this is why!
Ups and Downs
On the rise 📈
Knowledge organisers: In 2021, 25 per cent of you said knowledge organisers were a whole school policy. Now it’s 29 per cent.
Heading down 📉
The ‘go off on a tangent’ teachers: Fewer teachers are now spending time helping students learning topics they are interested in, because they need to cover more curriculum. In 2018, 28 per cent would nevertheless go off-piste; now it’s only 19 per cent.
This week we asked how strongly you agreed with the following statement: ‘If students are interested in a topic I try to help them find out more about it, but I don’t use class time because I have a lot of curriculum to cover’.
Daily Reads
Our most read daily read this week was Amy Forrester’s pastoral blog: Being a new head of year
If you would like to read the rest you can find them here 👇
