Dealing with misconceptions!

Many schools will be closing this week marking the beginning of the summer holidays. Those outside the education world may well still hold the idea that this Friday defines a major close down for all schools and colleges and that because teaching staff are always profiled as heading off to the sun, support staff are associated with that experience.

In reality, most independent schools and colleges have already closed weeks ago, as have some state schools, depending on their location in the UK and while many schools are closing down this week for their major break, many exams office staff in colleges are returning from holiday, if they can afford one, to prepare for forthcoming course registrations and results days. This idea that all schools and colleges are totally closed for six or seven weeks of the year in the summer is totally misleading.

Indeed many exams office staff in state schools will also be returning to their exam centres to carry  out thier results day duties, if their contract permits. In some centres exams office staff are not even contracted to attend these very important results days. The relationship between both academic staff and exams office staff is so important at this very sensitive time for both students and exam centres. Sadly, some centres still feel its acceptable to keep exams staff away and let acedemic staff take all teh strain.

In some cases it has been reported that the numerous queries from students about their results and the consequences that follow, for example having to do re-sits, are having to be picked up by senior academic staff who may be on call, even though they may have had very little to do with exam entries or exam delivery.

Everyone needs a break but we still have a situation where for example GCSE and A’ Level results come out when academic staff are not reachable nor are exam office staff present in some centres, due to contractual constraints, to link the processes together. In most centres preparation for such scenarios dealing with student needs are agreed before everyone disappears, to insure results days go through successfully.

So why this misconception that all exam centres seem to be un-contactable during these summer months. When one rings a school one often gets the standard answer phone message that the centre is closed. But of course any exams office staff will tell the outside world that they are often open for business but not always contactable because they sit behind a culture that is based upon the principle that when teachers stop teaching, both students and teachers go on holiday the whole place shuts down. The real reason of course for staff not being tehre generally, is that a centre can only pay staff for a certain number of hours and with everyone now trying to reduce budgets this issue may even grow.

As over 44% staff in schools and colleges are support staff there are a lot of people out there working away behind the scenes every summer holiday period, contracts permitting, not on holiday for five or six weeks who continue to make a valuable contribution to keeping the system on track, so students are supported and delivered successfully across the UK.