[YodaTheWrinkledO...]

Genuine curiosity, why don't school development days occur during the school holidays when the students aren't attending anyway?

[toosenuf]

Genuine curiosity, why don't school development days occur during the school holidays when the students aren't attending anyway?

i have wondered about this too

[PrincessPeach]

Public or Private School?

Pupil Free Days always used to be used for this sort of thing.

[dadathome]

Because government's haven't offered sufficient incentive to encourage teachers to attend work on their days of non-attendance. In NSW, agreement to individual, designated shcool development days was a big cost saving.

(in NSW at least, teachers get 4 week's annual leave, with the rest of the school holidays covered by official non-attendance. The annual salary accounts for that period of non-attendance)

[Heather11]

One of the reasons I can gather is that contract staff don't get paid for holidays. Therefore they will be not be getting paid while doing the PD.

[liveworkplay]

They do as well in some schools. Teachers are contracted to do a certain number of days per year (as well as a certain number of face to face teaching time). How the school organises that is up to their relevant governing bodies.

[somila]

And there are so many contract staff these days. A couple of teachers in my staff room were "sacked" a week before the end of school last year, and their contracts were renewed in January.

They have been at the school for 3 or 4 years at least, and are both working as co-ordinators as well as classroom teachers and have significant extra-curricular involvement.

I'm assuming it's all about the money that the government saves over the summer holidays, but ...

Seriously, just give these people permanent employment!!!

Rant over.

[Lyra]

One of the reasons I can gather is that contract staff don't get paid for holidays. Therefore they will be not be getting paid while doing the PD.

This is and also because some contract teachers might not even know what school they have been assigned to until the first day of term or even the first week.

[~kitteh.hoardere...]

I teach in the ACT (I've taught both College and High School) and ours are all in stand down.

This year school went back Feb 4th and teachers were required to be at PD on Jan 30th to Feb 1st. On the odd occasion where there aren't enough days at the beginning of the year then they will do another one in the April stand down. Like the year that easter was the last weekend of term and then they put a PD day on the Tuesday, which is awesome if your partner isn't a teacher and you would have liked to have had a holiday using the 4 days of Easter. Mind you I rarely have time to have a "holiday."

This post has been edited by PussyDids: 13/02/2013, 11:03 AM

[Sassy Girl]

They don't occur during holidays because teachers are people too and need time off Many teachers use the school holidays to spend time with their children as well as do normal school work, I am sure they'd love to do extra work as well during their time off