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What does your school do to support the menopause? This, health and safety measures and parents' evenings...

19 October 2021

If you’re already on half term – congratulations! For the 85% of you who have to get through another week, you can do it! Almost there!

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1. Nearly no masks in sights!

Not only is Covid still circulating, but a super cold has also been spreading! (Including through many here at Teacher Tapp towers!)

That hasn’t stopped many of you trying to go back to normal for your health and safety measures this term! Nearly 80% of you said that you had stopped implementing any of the measures that have recently become commonplace.

73% of you stopped your classes sharing stationery last year, but now, just 8% of you say the same. Assigned seats have also gone – 44% of you said this happened at this point last year and now it’s just 8%.

Measures are only slightly different between primary and secondary schools. 12% of primary schools are saying “no” to stationery sharing, compared to just 5% of secondaries. More of you in secondary schools are wearing masks – 8%, when just 3% of your primary colleagues are doing the same.

2. How is your school supporting the menopause?

This year, Monday 18th October marked World Menopause Day. We wanted to find out how your school supported those going through the menopause.

Only 5% of you said that your school had a policy for supporting menopausal women, although many of you didn’t know whether a policy like this existed in your school!

The group who were most confident in their policies were headteachers. 15% of heads said that they do have a policy to support menopausal women.

15% is much greater than the 3% of classroom teachers who said their school did have a policy. The difference in percentages suggests that you may be in a school where a policy exists but you don’t know about it! If in doubt, ask! You might be pleasantly surprised!

Perhaps it’s better to split this data by male and female teachers, as it is more likely female teachers would be aware of it than male teachers. Indeed, there are significantly more ‘don’t know‘s from male teachers than female ones.

The difference between headteachers and female classroom teachers still exists here though. So best to ask to make sure!

Requiring a policy to support menopausal women is popular among both genders of teachers.

Two-thirds of you agree that having a policy to support menopausal women should be required by schools.

The idea is slightly more popular among female teachers than male. Although more male teachers reported the ‘neither agree nor disagree’ and ‘don’t know’ options, rather than disagreeing.

3. The return of the face-to-face parents’ evening? Not quite…

Many teachers reported the introduction of online parents’ evening as a positive over the past 18 months. In fact, back in November we asked whether you’d like to keep virtual parents’ evenings, 40% of you said that you’d like to keep seeing parents over Zoom.

Now the reality has set in and you appear to be following through with your wishes! In secondary schools, 60% of you are holding your parents evenings online. Just under 20% hosting a face-to-face parents evening.

However, secondary schools in less affluent areas are more likely to be hosting a face-to-face parents evenings. While only 9% of the most affluent schools are having parents’ evening in-person, 39% of the most deprived schools are. Fewer families with suitable devices to be able to dial in may be the reason behind moving back to the face-to-face approach.

The same pattern is true for primary schools as well, although generally more are holding face-to-face sessions than secondary schools (39% vs. 17%). Once again, more deprived schools are hosting face-to-face parents’ evenings than less deprived schools.

Finally… we know you love the daily read, so here are the ones from last week

The most read tip this week was: What is the fundamental unaddressed issue of education?

And here are the rest for your reference: