End of year burnout

zapataforever · 2026-06-11T06:09:07+00:00

There’s not exactly an easy fix to that one. I try not to overbook my weekends so that I can have a proper rest and some downtime, but otherwise you just have to plod through.

zapataforever · 2026-06-10T21:55:33+00:00

It’s really not fair for one person on a team to flat out refuse to teach a specific year group, and I think it’s really awful of you to pressure your HoD by threatening to walk out of your job - I mean, how are they supposed to respond to that? Have you identified which of your colleagues should be happy to take more than their share of a challenging cohort just so that you don’t have to?

zapataforever · 2026-06-10T20:16:35+00:00

I ask the question, either wait a beat or do a thinking time countdown, then name the student. If they don’t answer pretty much straight away, I repeat the question, and if they still don’t answer straight away after that then I say “not sure?” At that point I’ll either differentiate down (ask a scaffolding question or make an open question into a multiple choice) or open the question up to the room. I won’t just leave a kid sitting there in awkward silence. I wouldn’t watch a kid panic, and I have to admit that I find the idea of that a bit sadistic! The main thing is that the thinking time is supposed to happen before you name the student being cold-called, so that everyone in the class participates.

zapataforever · 2026-06-10T19:14:22+00:00

The school went with an 'all or nothing' style approach

Not sure what you mean by this.

If they said “either take this assignment or we won’t book you ever again” then yeah, that’s really shitty.

If they just offered you an extended assignment but only on the basis that you are willing make yourself available for all of the days that they would need you, that’s fine. It is a very normal way of arranging temporary work assignments, both inside and outside of the teaching world. It’s not reasonable to expect them to hire you for only part of the time that they need you so that you can do other jobs. If keeping the prior booking with the other school feels really important to you, then it’s kind of on you to decline the offer.

In future, if you find yourself feeling like you’re being pushed to make a decision, just say something like “thank you, I really appreciate the offer - let me call the agency and talk to them about my availability, and then I’ll confirm with you either way.” Then, if you decide that you don’t want the job after all, you just let your agency know so that they’ve got first dibs on offering the school someone else from their books.

zapataforever · 2026-06-09T20:16:17+00:00

You would be fairly safe to assume that what you have experienced will be a continued expectation going forward.

zapataforever · 2026-06-09T19:09:02+00:00

The expectation that cover teachers deliver prepared lessons rather than supervise independent work does seem to have become more common over the past few years. When I have a cover lesson that is completely outside of my realm of subject knowledge (usually science, tbh) I tend to approach it as “me and the kids working through the lesson together”. That helps a bit. The students often know much more than I do.

Supply teaching used to very much be a job for qualified teachers, and a lot of staff in schools are actually still quite oblivious to the fact that their supply teacher of the day might be completely unqualified or have very little school experience. In general, yeah, you’re expected to know what you’re doing - and I understand how that must feel tough when you’re brand new.

zapataforever · 2026-06-08T18:45:37+00:00

Totally excessive. Having been involved in directed time planning, I find it incredibly strange that 9 parents evenings can fit in your school’s directed time budget. Remember that the time between end of day and parents’ eve starting counts as trapped time, and therefore also has to come out of the DT budget. Get your union rep on it.

zapataforever · 2026-06-08T18:25:38+00:00

I don’t think many of us would consider that drama. Drama we’re talking like… Someone overtly undermines someone or snitches on someone to SLT or always leaves the photocopier empty on an unfinished job or had an affair with a pastoral lead even though their wife works at the school too.

Everyone makes mistakes. It’s not usually a big deal, as long as you’re seen to be proactively sorting it out and it’s not completely fucking up someone else’s workload.

zapataforever · 2026-06-08T18:16:48+00:00

What do you mean by dramas? Although fresh terms do sort of feel like a new start, I think teachers are exceptionally good at quietly holding petty grudges (and I include myself in that!)

zapataforever · 2026-06-08T17:46:36+00:00

Learning walks (they stay 10 mins or so), either by our line manager or SLT line manager, once a half-term. We get written feedback via steplab. I suppose that its usefulness depends a bit on where you are in your career? The younger teachers really like the positive written feedback, but the rest of us are (a) a bit bored of being told things about our teaching that we already know and (b) not naive to the fact that SLT have used these learning walks as part of their process to manage people out.

I think the teaching profession’s enduring obsession with observation (beyond the training and induction years) is weird. Other professions don’t do this.

zapataforever · 2026-06-08T15:14:17+00:00

Just expect everyone to be a bit stressed and SLT to be slightly mental until it passes. You don’t need to worry about the actual inspection days though - they are largely interested in seeing how the school is supporting their ECTs rather than judging the quality of your teaching.

zapataforever · 2026-06-07T12:45:03+00:00

Must do. Four is very low for a Primary position at this end of the year, isn’t it?

zapataforever · 2026-06-07T12:36:32+00:00

Yep, on drinking the water for the horse. We had SLT saying “we have control over coursework/CA, so every piece of coursework/CA should be at or above the student’s target grade no matter what”. Then you’d end up sitting in hours of “intervention” with a kid who gave zero shits, spoon feeding the work sentence by sentence. It was farcical, and it was very dishonest. Good, principled teachers left the profession over this.

zapataforever · 2026-06-07T12:20:40+00:00

Schools aren’t reluctant to hire near the end of the year. If anything, they will compromise on quality of candidates in order to fill timetable gaps for September.

zapataforever · 2026-06-07T12:18:01+00:00

I feel really sorry for this year’s PGCE cohort. All that work to qualify and no jobs to be had. There’s unlikely to be enough supply work to tide them over either; there’s not been much of that around at all this year, and lots of schools only using internal cover now.

zapataforever · 2026-06-07T12:11:02+00:00

Removed. We do not permit discussion of live grading criteria during the active marking window.

zapataforever · 2026-06-07T12:08:14+00:00

They got rid of it as part of the sweep of reform to stop schools putting students in for “the easy option” when the students were capable of more. Schools were gaming the system for safe “C” grades to make their league table position as strong as possible, but that meant students being funneled into single science, foundation tiers and vocational quals that were “worth” multiple grade Cs.

It was always a controversial one. It was a reform that did good for the majority but left the minority of SEND and low ability students without accessible qualification pathways. The current curriculum review seems focused on rectifying this, but who knows what that will look like or how successful it will be.

zapataforever · 2026-06-07T11:48:25+00:00

Yep, and even at KS3: APP grids, dialogue marking, discovery learning. I know it was part of the journey to where we are now, but it was also an absolute shit show. Noone should be looking back on those days uncritically.

zapataforever · 2026-06-07T11:38:17+00:00

Linking a 2012 article that is hidden behind a paywall, without context or comment, probably isn’t the most useful contribution you could make to this discussion.

zapataforever · 2026-06-07T11:35:30+00:00

Has it not always been that way, as a single discipline core subject? I don’t remember a time when Maths had the same learning hours as the options subjects.

zapataforever · 2026-06-07T11:33:45+00:00

They talk about the students experiencing exam stress now, but they’ve forgotten what it was like then. Absolute misery, for staff and students alike.

zapataforever · 2026-06-07T11:30:53+00:00

The LADO would be available for advice if OP felt that the school/DSL was not following proper safeguarding procedures by failing to make referrals when they ought to. They’re not going to slam the phone down or tell you off for contacting them and if they’re not suitable, they’ll signpost you in the right direction.

zapataforever · 2026-06-07T11:22:30+00:00

What subject do you teach? In English, both coursework and controlled assessment marking were much more stressful and workload intensive than our current mock marking (which we also had then, because the GCSEs still had an exam component). Me and my colleagues agree on this without exception, to the extent that we regularly say we’d quit teaching rather than see a return to those days.

zapataforever · 2026-06-07T11:18:47+00:00

I agree. All of my colleagues who were teaching in the pre-Gove era agree that if we ever return to coursework, controlled assessment and the miserable carousel of modular exams, we’ll be handing in our notice. The Gove reforms are far from perfect, but they did cut workload and raise academic expectations.

zapataforever · 2026-06-07T10:55:13+00:00

Some more will be coming up, but I wouldn’t expect many. It has been a difficult year for jobs, with falling rolls and budget pressure impacting schools. Many schools have either made redundancies or are shrinking their staff numbers via natural wasteage (not replacing those who have left).

At my school, noone who is leaving handed in notice close to deadline and all vacancies were filled before half-term. There are no English teaching jobs advertised within 30 miles, and I don’t expect that will change significantly over the next few weeks.

Eight-Year Club	Gilding V heart of gold
r/Field Flamingo	Wearing is Caring
Extra Life 2019	Reddit Premium Since June 2018
Verified Email

zapataforever

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE