grumpy_git

In some cases this might not be practical, though. We have some second-floor classrooms, but no lifts whatsoever - no chance of getting a trolley up there! Plus if you're at one end of the site and need to move something back to your office, the trolley is kept at the other end (and even then might have been nabbed by someone else) - do you go around on a wild goose chase to procure a trolley, or just carry it? (Of course, if it's planned, you'd make sure to put your claim on the trolley well in advance).

The trouble with that (whilst an admirable idea) is that such things seem to be spur of the moment - at least here. Walking down a corridor and it's "My projector's not working! Can you help?" so you end up rummaging under the table (to retrieve the VGA cable which she dropped after using it in her laptop, no doubt ). As for ID badges, we have simple plastic things with the school name and logo on and a wee paper insert which the office prepare for each new member of staff. Of course they can (and do!) end up with a variety of humorous inserts... new staff get introduced in morning briefing so people in theory know who they are - doesn't stop some though, some departments in our school are very isolated (if it happens outwith their wing/corridor, it's not worth knowing about).

During term time, relatively smart trousers shirt and tie. According to the staff handbook, we're supposed to "set an example". I then put a jacket on normally, but keep a zip-up fleece for days when I'm doing 'manual' work - shifting computers about, going up ladders, drilling etc. In the holidays, anything goes!

For misuse of the system (playing games etc) we ban them from unsupervised access, staff need to authenticate each session before the kids can use it. The ones who vandalise now get to spend a lunchtime with the Head of IT scrubbling keyboards!

Which is precisely the reason why that would never be allowed to happen. He is there to bring justice, not revenge.

Wasn't the whole point of the teachers "Workload Agreement" to allow them to do just that? Unfortunately, again, the implementation was slightly flawed. Schools were told that teachers were now allowed to refuse to do a certain specified number of tasks - and that these should be done by support staff. Unless investment was (/is?) made in support staff, we simply move the workload problem from one group of staff to another. Recently, we had a few changes with regards to 'mentoring' students - the result of which is that each student has 'targets' etc on a piece of paper which is photocopied, sent home, a copy given to the student and filed. Of course, this is outwith the scope of a teachers job, so it gets chucked onto support staff, who simply didn't have the time for it. Each week since then in the pastoral meeting, it has been raised - "more admin time is needed". I think the result was to allow one of the office ladies a couple of hours overtime! Also, they say that things like cover admin, exams admin etc shouldn't be done by teachers. We have a teacher who is excellent at that sort of stuff - he's our timetabler as well - he is quite clearly THE person to do that job. OK has some admin help with typing in hundreds of resit applications and that sort of stuff, but, doesn't it make sense that the best person for the job does it, rather than some arbitrary division that "X shalth not do Y"?

This is very true. There are so many people who have a fancy job title and yet do screw all. We had a new member of SMT, appointed a couple of years back. Their remit, we were told, included doing most of the work experience stuff (the paperwork etc being done by one of the admin staff), organising INSET and 'professional tutoring' for staff, and working with the Head of 6th form to run said 6th form. A couple of years later, he is still in this post. The admin lady is now doing all the work experience work and is being paid a higher rate for it. The INSET has gone to another group of staff (all with extra payments), and the professional tutoring to another member of staff (with extra payments and about a half timetable). The 6th form is run by the Ho6th, with help from his assistant and another admin lady. So we're paying someone who 'coordinates' these areas, but actually does very little - other than wander in and moan at the students occasionally, go to endless meetings etc. It seems like his actual involvement in anything is simply looking at what everyone else is doing... Oh and takes time off to go on courses, meetings etc despite being on an SMT half-timetable. (That's another thing that gets me. All our teachers with any sort of vauge management responsibility have bags of time off timetable to do it. Yet when they organise a meeting with parents, or a meeting between themselves, or something, they do it in their timetabled time? Therefore costing the school a small fortune in cover. And then teachers complain about being used - in their specified COVER periods - to cover? Don't see us complaining when the reprographics lady is out and we're expected to know where the cameras are kept, or another person in our team is out and we do extra work, or one of the caretakers is out and 300 exam desks need put out!).

The irritating thing is the whole attitude towards teachers pay and support staff pay. With teachers the school have to pay the going rate - they are standard across the whole country. Support staff - they can pay what they like. OK here we have a set of County 'reccomended' grades but the school don't seem to listen to them and just pay what they feel like (and then lie to staff about what they're getting) - oh and ignore questions about how it's worked out etc. If there's a funding problem in the school, it's the support staff who will be the ones losing out. For the past few years we've been trying to get another full-timer hired in, the response has always been "no money" - yet then the school go and introduce a load of new responsibility posts, paying TLRs and then generous lumps of non-contact time?! Its quite galling to be told that you can't work extra hours as there's no money to pay for them (at sh*t pay) - but then hear how an "educational consultant" is being brought in. At £800 a day. For a week. As for the strikes, it'd probably take quite a few teachers going out to shut our school, and even if the kids were sent home the rest would be in doing rainy-day jobs. But if just one member of support staff - the caretaker - went out, that would be everyone gone!

How shiny are they? Our laminate benches are usually pretty shiny if polished, and I've never had any problems with them.

That's a useful tip - thanks, will give it a go some time. I always used Windolene or equivalent on CRTs and it doesn't seem to have caused any problems on the TFTs either. Out of interest who's job is it in other schools to go around clearing mucky fingerprints off the screens? Our cleaners have difficulty doing more than waving the hoover in the general direction of the carpet, and don't touch the machines. (To be fair they don't have much time, although one does seem to spend more time texting people on her phone than cleaning). At the moment I go around cleaning the screens at the same time as removing dust from the inside of the case on about a termly basis.

We have another HoD who sends glitzy newsletters... in Word format... as an attatchment... to all 1500ish users. *grumble* I have taken to carrying a patch lead, network cable tester and screwdriver with me when going to the loo. The route from our office to the staff loos takes me past two departments, the main office, the staffroom and an SMT members office. Being sick of being collared on the way I took to carrying said items so if anyone asks me I'm "busy on an important job" .

Generally what I do is reply to the mail (saying "OK I've fixed it" or "Will sort it out next week when the room is free" or whatever) and copy it to the list, hence it goes to everyone else in the team and they know that it's being dealt with (and, equally, should they need to finish a job off for some reason they're kept up to date with it). I remember last summer we had a spate of Year 7s sending chainmail around. A member of SMT announced in briefing that such mail was unacceptable and that staff should warn students not to do it. A few weeks later one of their SMT colleagues sent one to all staff! We have seen an increase in email usage, but there are still those who refuse to touch it. My take on it now is that I'll email people, if they don't reply, then it's them who's losing out, and if that causes them hassle in the future - that's their problem.

We didn't used to have any system so it was very haphazard. Some staff would write paper memos, the more technologically advanced would send email - but they would typically only send it to one person, instead of to the whole department. Most would report them in person or by phone. Now we have an address for staff to send to which copies mail to the entire department, so for most jobs whoever reads it first does it. For the more complex or specialised it obviously still gets done by a particular person. Takeup is increasing however you still get stopped in the corridors, and even if then asked to mail a request too, nobody bothers!

& & However we curtail surnames to 5 letters. Remove all apostrophes and hyphens although some old usernames remain with them in. For year of entry we do them by year group so if someone joined year 10 now, they would be 05 because that year as a whole started in 2005.

I think our insurance excess is about £100 quid anyway - so recording a £2 mouse is pointless!

If we recorded every single keyboard and mouse we'd be there all day. At the moment the annual audit is basically me going around each piece of kit and ticking it off the database, adding/removing where necessary. It would be so much quicker if you could go round a room scanning barcodes, then compare that with the list of what *should* be in the room. And when scrapping a batch of monitors, instead of scribbling numbers on post-it notes, scanning all the barcodes and setting all those as 'scrapped'. Bog standard paper labels is an idea if we put them somewhere that kids can't/are unlikely to go, perhaps with some clear tape (outdoor grade stuff?) covering them to prevent some damage.

Thanks, think at 4 grand we could only dream! I was wondering about getting some stickers which we could use with a barcode reader - this we could then interface with our kit database, currently just held in Access. Although I suppose said stickers would need to be kid/teacherproof...

Are you using some commercial system or "homebrew"? Our equipment database is a year or so out of date - so overburdened over the summer we didn't get chance to do the usual annual audit. If it were pretty cheap to implement something with barcodes I might suggest it to TPTB... Mice and keyboards we don't record. We seem to be swimming in them, and the amount of time it would take to record them all would be silly.

I'm not Scottish per se, although I do now live in Edinburgh for just over half the year .

Thanks for the heads up - I have a wee blue LED torch thingy which is useful but I think I may splash out on one of the cheapo aldi ones.

Very useful if traveling - National Express, for example, have free wifi on their trains. Now if LRT would do the same to their buses... also use mine at uni, far easier to lug about than a huge laptop.

Probably, in an arse-covering sense, if you're now formalising them - i.e. permitting them to bring them in and knowingly adding them to the network - you'd need to do it to cover yourself. Previously the school could just have said "we didn't know" or "they're not supposed to use equipment without PAT". (This said we are very behind on our PAT because nothing is done about our lack of time/staffing, sigh). As a rule we don't let personal devices on, I don't know what may happen in the future - it's outwith my control - I think I heard some mumbling about letting 6th formers on the wireless in their common room, but that's another (case of) tins of worms...

I believe they are free for everyone - I have certainly seen a large poster in my local opticians saying that eye tests were now free to all, funded by the NHS. Hence, why I was confused that an employer should pay for them, if they were free anyway! However, this might just be something funded by my local NHS trust...

Eye tests are free anyway? Or does the company have to provide some different test?

You can get some pretty decent rail fares - book as far in advance as possible to get the dirt cheap tickets. As others have said also get a family railcard, as these now give you an added discount on ap tickets.