The joys of hourly paid teaching work lol

My Dyslexia Pathways CIC logo

Hello there hope you are all feeling fab

Zero hours contracts oh joy, no holiday no sick pay no worker rights lol. Here is a little story about that.

When I first qualified as a teacher, way back in 1995, I had to work on a number of these zero hours term time only contracts.

I worked at three different colleges across London at the same time, I didn't know from day to day where or when I was working.

I got a call one morning from one college asking me to come in and teach a group of students with learning disabilities. I was given maybe 45 minutes notice to get there and had to get a cab. It was during the rush hour and the cab got caught in traffic and I was 15 minutes late.

I met with the head of department who threw me into the class without any idea of what the students were doing and she failed to let me know the class was being inspected. Talk about scary, it was the first time I had been inspected, I had no learning materials, there was no learning materials provided, not even the names of the students.

Anyway, if being a musician has taught me anything its how to improvise how to playing by ear, to jam. To cut a long story short the session went really well. The inspector was impressed at what we did. Not so impressed by what the college had done.

After the class I went back to see this head of department who promptly thanked me and then said she god bless you but she would be paying me for the two hours taught less the 15 minutes because I was late. Zero hours contracts no thank you very much.

Things have not changed much since then, I have been working at one university here in Scotland through my social enterprise Dyslexia Pathways CIC. Again its on a semester time only hourly paid basis. Been doing this for 12 years now. Almost all study support specialist teachers in universities across the whole UK have hourly paid semester time only contracts. This may suit some of them.

These specialist teachers do not know from week to week how many hours they are working, no holiday pay no really employment rights. Often they will not know where they will be working on any given day. They cannot apply for Access to Work funding if they are disabled.

Ok that's enough from me for this blog

#PeaceLoveGroovyness to you all

Steve McCue