Thank you to everyone who sent photos of you tapping for the Teacher Tapp Time Summer competition. Winners of the bumper Teacher Tapp merch hamper can be found here!
Right, summer party is over. Let’s dive into this week’s results…
1. Will first week behaviour last? (Spoiler: Noooo)
First weeks can be challenging as everyone is getting back into the routines of school life. But is it more challenging than battling through the depths of winter?
To figure it out, you told us which month brings the most difficult student behaviour.
December triumphed, with 4 in 10 of you predicting the month of festivities and tiredness will bring out pupils’ most challenging behaviour. But there were some differences between primary and secondary predictions.
One-quarter of primary teachers chose September as the most challenging behaviour time, compared to just 1 in 10 secondary teachers.
On the flip side, one-third of secondary teachers predict that November will see the most challenging behaviour, compared to just 9% of primary teachers.
Could it be that primary pupils struggle more to learn routines at the start, whereas teenagers increasingly test boundaries as they find their feet?
School affluence also plays a part. Those of you working in less affluent areas are more likely to choose September as the most challenging behaviour month (24%) than colleagues in more affluent schools (15%).
It’s a stereotype to say that students from less affluent backgrounds take longer to learn routines at the start of school, but this data would suggest there are more upfront challenges for those of you working in areas of greater deprivation.
That said, December remains the most popular answer wherever you teach!
As the term progresses, these predictions will be tested through behaviour-related questions so watch this space.
2. Ofsted Survival
The latest Ofsted framework, introduced from September 2019, focused on curriculum and the three Is of Intent, Implementation and Impact.
How much of your time has been spent prepping for such inspections?
The last time we asked about courses to help you prep for or survive Ofsted, around 36% of you had either done an in-school or external course. That figure is now 51%!
Given what we’ve shown in the past about all the work done on re-writing the curriculum to make it ‘Ofsted ready’, this isn’t entirely surprising – but always useful to track the changes.
3. Do schools provide teachers with the tech they need?
As the country starts the most normal school year since 2019, we’ve been looking back into the vaults at your responses since 2018 to see if there are examples of change from before and after the pandemic.
One of the things that policymakers now seem to assume is that schools are much more full of technology than they were before the pandemic.
However, we haven’t necessarily seen the huge leaps they’re expecting. For example, back in 2018, 55% of you had a school-owned device that you can personally use for school work. Today, that figure has climbed, but it’s still only 68%. The proportion with a tablet has also fallen – from 28% back in 2018, to 22% now.
And though there’s a slight increase in school-owned phones, to 2%, that growth happened between 2018 and 2019 – so no pandemic effect there either.
4. What to do about single-sex schools?
The National ResearchEd conference last weekend was held at an all-girls state school, with an all-boys state school sharing the same postcode and an adjoining gate. Conversations with staff at the all-girls schools, who had also worked in mixed schools, said there was a different dynamic in an all-girls school, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse in their opinion.
So how do other teachers feel about state-funded single-sex schools and have your views changed since 2019?
Again, there was no pandemic effect! Your views are largely the same: with 11% declaring your support now compared to 12% in 2019. Although slightly more of you now prefer that existing single-sex schools become mixed over time (38%) compared to 2019 (34%).
Male teachers were more likely to want existing single-sex schools to become mixed over time (44% for men, 46% for women). Female teachers were slightly more likely to believe that if there’s a girl’s school there must also be a boy’s school (32%) than their male counterparts (27%).
5. What do teachers get up to in their summer holiday?
As a student, it was mind-blowing to think that your teachers had a life outside of school. It was nearly impossible to imagine them doing such ‘normal’ things as going on holiday or watching TV.
So as the 2022 summer holiday draws to a close, what HAVE you been up to while not teachering?!
There’s been a big change in the number of you who completed an entire TV series this summer with 62% having done so, up from 41% in 2018. Either the quality of shows on offer has improved or lockdowns have turned you into TV fanatics!
One of the things we did over here at Teacher Tapp towers was to ask you the same question about activities at the beginning and end of the holidays to see how your activities changed.
Many of you sprang into action straight away, with nearly three-quarters of you delving into a good book within the first couple of weeks. Not only that, but your wallets have also taken a hit, with 79% saying that you’ve spent more money than usual 💷
Some of your hard-earned money was spent on new work clothes ready for the start of term. Both men and women spruced up their wardrobes; although male teachers were slightly more likely to leave it to the last minute.
By the end of the summer, 3 in 4 of you had been on a holiday away from home, but the vast majority of you (92%) had also completed some form of ‘school work’ over the summer, too.
What was the most common work activity in the summer? Emails were sent by 76% of you (well done to the quarter who managed to fully switch off!) and half of you had completed lesson planning and curriculum planning. We hope the work over the summer to get ahead on planning is paying off this week 😊
Good luck with this year! We can’t wait to continue finding out how school has changed pre- and post-pandemic, and to keep sharing your ideas with whoever the new education secretary is.
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: A Warning About Baseline Tests!
Here are the universal reads for your reference:
- Some school trips are more than just trips…
- Micro-Explanations in English Lessons
- Prebunking and Debunking: How to handle conspiracy theories in the classroom
- Principles of effective middle leadership 1/5
- Coming back for more: When September comes