h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Long and detailed rant coming up, very sorry if this just showed up on your conversation list... I just need to get it out!

Been a cr@ppy few months at work, no staff for varying reasons, mat. leave, long term sick, & holidays, leaving me there to deal with the consequences of having millions of kids in (up to 29 in one room (my room) alone) with only one other person for actual support at many times in the day, especially Mondays.

...Mondays; the staff situation has been royally ****ed up there! - Job share staff not job sharing across the week. The one who should be doing Mornings goes to college for English GCSE on Mondays - which is something I always thought night school was for... Or which could and should happen in the afternoon when it's not work time. I can just imagine what they would say to me if I were to ask if I could go do GCSE anything on work time! - well done management!

But it gets better because the person who was originally employed to do the afternoon half of the day - & that is how the post was advertised and interviewed as - decided that they don't like this arrangement, so approaches management, who somehow decided that it will be OK for her then to do 2.5 days each week. Tuesday, Wednesday and half of Friday.

We also have another permanent member of staff doing mornings only, with the other half of that job share currently unfilled because of mat. leave, and will be for another 3 and a half months.

Then when you add sick leave and holiday for another 2 staff (again from the same unit) & you begin to see why I might get a little bit stressed by this
Especially on Mondays.

Today however was a training day - which is all about planning and the new curriculum standards (or whatever they call them now), which the big wigs insist will mean less paperwork. - Someone's having one, & it's certainly not me

They tell me there will be less weekly planning to do because it will already have been done. - "Who by?" I ask, out comes another sheet showing medium term planning. "You'll fill this at the beginning of every topic. Oh and by the way now we do a new one every 8 weeks rather than every 3 months,". So we do weekly planning for up to 3 different areas, and 6 lots of medium planning each year, and a Long term plan to plan the medium planning to plan for the weekly 3 plans... Oh & then you have to evaluate every stage as you go along.

Of course OFSTEAD (yes there's only one F-in OFSTEAD) insisting on Literacy and numeracy as priority areas, more focus is placed on that type of activity and they want plenty of evidence to show that it's happening. Sometimes I wonder when these poor children will ever get to have fun and do things they want to - if they can't do it now (and increasingly they can't) they might as well forget it!

To top things off I discovered that a level-1 (unqualified) member of staff working part time (2 and a half days - as mentioned above) with a child, earns only £200 less than I do. When I stupidly spent 2 years training in college, will have to deal with 10 children in my key group opposed to the Level-1's 3, have to do all the associated paperwork for those children, including writing a detailed report for each child annually (level ones will get support from a senior centre worker for this part, or will get it done for them), work double the hours & do triple the planning.

Yes there are good times, but recently they have been few and far between and I increasingly find myself wondering why the I bother

I'm geting closer to the prize at the end of my rope!

Aw! That does sound really frustrating for you - is there somewhere official you can complain to at all about all this?

Not really, it's the people I would have to complain to who are causing most of the problems.

I wish I could come up with some idea of what else I could blimmin' well do instead! Then I could get out... 'till then I gotta lump it I guess

International rock star?

Don't think I quite have the tallent.

Not that it stops many other folk out there...

Go for it girl!