A brief work-related update...

As regular readers of these posts will know, all my clever plans to teach this academic year and also start a part-time PGCE got given a major kicking by our lovely Tory government's inability to manage joined-up thinking. Sure, we're going to be taking more refugees (as we should, no argument from me) and in the meanwhile people need to learn English for reasons but this will happen by unfunded means similar in appearance to magic.

Anyway, the current situation is this - we're in consultation over what happens from January onwards. The folks I work for employ a bunch of folks on various fractions of a full-time post and then a few folks like myself who are paid on a sessional basis. The fractional folks have to teach so many hours per year, depending on their contract, and get paid through the year, while us sessional folks only get paid for what we teach and have no entitlement.

From next week, the organisation is running a reduced level of classes staffed by the fractional folks as a holding position while they reorganise for January, at which point people will either have a job or not. Fractional folks can take voluntary redundancy before this (and the teacher whose class I took over in January this year has done that) or will get compulsory redundancy if they don't get re-hired. Sessional folks are eligible for neither but it's been agreed we can put ourselves forward for re-hiring on the same basis as the fractional folks. This is an unexpectedly even-handed approach and actually I was pleasantly surprised to hear the door was open for us too.

So we're not completely bollocksed, but it's still a bit up in the air. We should get interviews mid-October, unless enough people leave or voluntarily reduce their hours prior to that and mean the relevant hours can be provided by everyone left without too much squabbling. There's already been at least one 'why don't we all play nice and reduce our hours a bit so we don't have to go through this?' but some of us don't have any hours to reduce and others can't afford to. It's a nice idea but relies on the concept that folks are doing this job for pin money and while that's certainly true for one or two I'm aware of, it's definitely not the case for others.

The PGCE is done for this year, though. No guaranteed teaching hours (at least not until January, assuming I'm successful at interview) = no place. I'm going to ask for deferred entry, as they'd accepted my application, as things will be settled this time next year, one way or another!