Hey Tappsters!
Spooky season has begun, with plans for Halloween and fireworks night taking shape – plus, we have exciting news to share…
New prize draw 🤩🌂
The weather reports are threatening rain – but that won’t be a problem for one lucky Tapper – as there are TEN large umbrellas up for grabs!
To take part, answer questions five days in a row on Teacher Tapp. You will earn a ticket visible in your app under prize draw and, if we have your permission, we’ll send an email each time you get a ticket too. Collect as many as you can between 7th – 31st October. After 3:30pm on 1st of November, we’ll draw a winning ticket. 🎉
Note: there’s no need to do anything with your tickets – they are automatically entered into the prize draw. BUT, you might like to check your tickets when we announce the winner: it has a special code on it!
We’ll share the winning ticket code on our socials, and email the winner too. Full terms and conditions here.
Okay, on to results…
Sanctioning pupils
All schools have a behaviour policy – but how frequently are teachers using it?
Primary classroom teachers are more likely to use the school sanctions policy to challenge minor misbehaviours than secondary classroom teachers (61% vs 53%).
However, when it comes to more serious behaviour, the results are more aligned; the use of the sanctions policy to address major misbehaviours is very similar in primary and secondary classrooms (18% and 17%).
Primary classroom teachers are also more likely to have their own systems in place for sanctioning pupils compared to secondary classroom teachers (7% vs 2%), though this is quite rare in both phases.
Poor behaviour is more common in primary classes, with only 25% of primary classroom teachers reporting no poor behaviour, compared to 41% of secondary classroom teachers.
Perhaps the awful weather has contributed to some of the poor behaviour above (maybe the Teacher Tapp umbrellas would help…) as heavy rain leads to behaviour problems at break and lunch in 85% of schools.
This is a problem that has grown since we first asked in 2022, with 21% reporting big problems in 2024, compared to 12% in 2022 and 19% in 2023.
Guilt-free sanctions?
Although issuing sanctions is an everyday task for teachers, does that mean it’s always done guilt-free? The answer is, not always.
Primary teachers are more likely than secondary teachers to ‘somtimes’ feel guilty (48% vs 38%) and secondary are more likely to say they ‘never’ feel guilty sanctioning a pupil (14% vs 8%).
This week in the app there are more questions about behaviour PLUS how your school keeps parents in the loop when pupils misbehave 👀.
Unhappy at work
Of course, as well as guilt, student misbehaviour also causes significant stress. How much stress seems to vary depending on your job role.
Student behaviour was the number one cause of stress for classroom teachers (24%) followed by admin tasks (15%) and then accountability (10%).
The top three look different for headteachers: parents were the number one cause of stress (21%), followed by pastoral concerns (20%) and accountability (15%).
Not only does your seniority play a part in which aspect of your job is the most stressful, but so does your subject specialism.
📊 Maths teachers are the most likely to find behaviour the biggest source of stress (23%) and humanities, arts and PE were joint least likely (17%).
🎨 Over in the arts, admin tasks were the biggest source of stress (23%) and this dropped to just 13% for PE teachers.
📚 Marking was more likely to be the source of stress for English and humanities teachers (11%) but for KS1 teachers it was much rarer (2%).
Maths assessments in primary
The stress of assessments isn’t only felt by the pupils (as our data above shows!) but when maths assessments in primary take place, what do they look like?
In EYFS and KS1, they’re most likely to involve manipulatives like Numicons or multilink cubes (69%), whereas in KS2 they’re most likely to use pen and paper (83%).
Digital assessments were used in a quarter of private schools (25%) and less than one in ten state schools (9%).
Mini whiteboards were popular everywhere: a third of EYFS/KS1 maths assessments used them (33%), and just under half in KS2 (46%).
This question was sent in from a teacher who was curious about assessment approaches and how they vary between the key stages: do you have a question you would like to put in the app? Get in touch either through ‘contact us’ in the settings in the app, or by emailing england@teachertapp.co.uk.
What is in your staffroom?
Rewind 50 years and most staffrooms would be unrecognisable to what they are today: not only were they usually full of smoke, but there would be no photocopier – instead you would have to try and work the banding machine 🥴.
But when it comes to facilities, what do teachers have today? Microwaves are common in primary and secondary (97% and 90%) as are fridges (98% and 94%). However, more primary staffrooms boast freezers (47% vs 19%).
Fortunately, most schools still have staffrooms – just 1% of primaries are without and 4% of secondaries.
🎩 Top events
A new event this week! From The Science Hub: Science Technicians Autumn Term Online Network Meeting
This is a FREE in person event – if you are interested in more events like this, the events tab in the app is packed with suggestions to meet your CPD needs, so jump in and start exploring today!
Ups and Downs
On the rise 📈
Teachers marking with specific colour pens – Specifying the colour of pen used to mark work is on the increase – compared to October 2022, it has risen to 72% from 69%.
Heading down 📉
Friday pub visits – Fewer teachers now head to the pub together after work on a Friday. Compared to the Autumn term in 2019, those saying they go ‘often’ or ‘sometimes’ has dropped to 24% from 33%.
Daily Reads
This week our most-read blog was a KS1/EYFS special from Impact on what maths should look like in the early years.
Have you seen a great blog you think would make a great daily read? Let us know by emailing england@teachertapp.co.uk and we will check it out!
