Supply Teaching ‘Child Protection/SafeGuarding’ Weekend Training

One major aspect that came from the Supply Teacher Seminar in Sept & one that I spoke on at both this Seminar & at my local division level was the lack of training events for supply teachers at weekends & during holidays.

It is a basic point, but one that needs saying again & again, if supply teachers take up the Union training opportunities it means they will have to lose money and possible future work, by not being available for work at this time with their agencies. I raised this point and used the most recent NASUWT training booklet as a prime example at the Supply Teachers Seminar, for example out of 43 dates for one course in this booklet only one was run at a weekend. The argument for this was that we do not want to give up our hard fought battle for time off for union training, which is a valid argument, but does not help the ‘Special Interest’ groups like supply teachers who have more diverse needs.

The simple fact is supply teachers are being discriminated against  by the lack of weekend/holiday training events.

From the Supply Seminar in Sept, our union has reacted & put on a number of safeguarding training opportunities for supply teachers which are run at weekends.

I attended one last weekend at Rednal

It covered all the major aspects supply teachers require for Safeguarding & was an excellent course, which was accredited & certificates issued to provide evidence were major plus points.

Whilst the course was very condensed & could have been at least a full day, it is good news the Union are reacting and offering training opportunities such as these.

More please, on more diverse areas & lets have more weekend/holiday dates for all the courses in the current training booklet, but in the first instance – well done to the training dept,

If we can moan, we can also say thanks when they respond to specific requests such as these.