When all the madness of the recession was on, it seems in order to try and satiate the howls of the public about how few hours the public sector worked, an hour a week was added to our schedules. These are known as Croke Park Hours.
These hours are tokenistic at best. They do not offer enough time to do anything worthwhile such as planning so they end up being used to conjure up random things to pass the time.
Most teachers spend several hours per week planning and doing paperwork in non-contracted working hours. Many teachers also do after school clubs voluntarily.
The aim of this post isn’t to moan about the hour. I think we need to think about our non-contact hours, formalising them and paying teachers properly for them.
Is there an argument to make teaching a 40-hour week with non-contact time built in for planning, paperwork, meetings, etc? Once this was done, there would be no other work allowed? If there was extra work done, it would be paid in overtime like any other workplace? Should are CPD be recognised for pay?
These are simply questions rather than suggestions. How should we be looking at our non-contact time?
