Teach Sleep Repeat

More schools than ever are taking two weeks off in October, so where does the extra week come from? Dylan explains how his old school swapped INSET days for twilights, why it can cut term-time holidays, and Hayden asks the obvious question about day one safeguarding training.

Then it's your school trip stories, and you sent thousands. A Year 3 child leaves a trail through the British Museum and a teacher ends up in Primark buying emergency trousers. An NQT counts 60 kids into the wrong museum. A head teacher puts on gloves to search a sick bucket for a retainer. Two Year 7s lick their way round a botanical garden and end up in A&E.

Along the way: when you can actually say no to the toilet on a trip, watching England v Brazil on a coach in 2002, how classes derail lessons on purpose, and why real children's authors might be fed up with celebrity picture books.

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It’s nearly the end of Term 1, which means the first parents’ evening of the year, usually when you’re shattered and losing your voice. Dylan and Hayden talk about why it’s still worth doing, what parents actually want to hear (whether their child is happy, not fronted adverbials), and whether teachers should be stricter about keeping to time. Then a quick-fire round: online or in person, one long night or two, 5, 10 or 15 minute slots, chasing no-shows, and whether the child should sit in.
In the second half we read out your most unhinged parents’ evening stories. There’s the parent who called a Welsh teacher a nationalist for saying Wales has a capital city, an MFL teacher insulted as a “Europhile”, a parent who doesn’t believe in detention, a five-minute rant aimed at the wrong teacher, and Marjorie, who says hello even though she’s no longer with us. Along the way there’s a row about whether mediums are a con, and Hayden still can’t get over the Nectar card incident.
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Hayden plans the episode this week, which means you get a game. He opens with a bedtime story about his nearly-three-year-old that ends with the question no parent wants to hear: “Dad, where am I going to put my bogey?” Then Blind Rank is back by listener request. Dylan has to rank playground duty, parents’ evening, teaching art, the staffroom and one more mystery job without knowing what’s coming next. He gets badly stitched up at number one.
Next, Dylan drove past two primary schools on the way to the new office and counted more than a dozen parents vaping on the school run. Is that just normal now? The boys get into what kids pick up from it, vaping in secondary toilets, the generational smoking ban and whether it’s a nanny state, and vapes made to look like highlighters.
In the Q&A, a listener asks what you’d buy if you had to stock a brand new school with maths resources from scratch. Dienes, Cuisenaire rods, multilink cubes, real clock faces, plenty of 3D shapes, and the place value sliders you should never pay for. That turns into a proper conversation about using CPA flexibly and the links in maths that actually make a difference.
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Hayden is back after one whole week of paternity leave, with a 10-day-old son called Albie (who Dylan has already renamed Albatross). We talk about how much calmer you are second time round, which parenting "rules" turn out not to matter and which ones really do, then get properly stuck into why children are so gross: snot bubbles in Reception, the Year 6 residential room nobody wants to open on day three, and a crisp eaten straight out of the bin.

Then your questions. One listener's school has put a twilight, a parents evening and an open evening in the same week. Is that unreasonable? Short answer: yes. We get into directed time, why an open evening should replace something rather than just be added on, and whether teaching really is harder than other jobs. Plus, after our Bridget Phillipson interview, would new Education Secretary Lucy Powell ever come on the show? Lucy, the invite is open.
🐘 Free Maths Zoo arithmetic worksheet generator: tools.mathszoo.app

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More from us: www.teachsleeprepeatpodcast.com
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Once a year we ask you for your school's biggest red flags, and once a year you absolutely bury us. Nearly a thousand comments on Facebook alone, so we've pulled out the worst of them and gone through them one by one.
A memo banning anyone below SLT from drinking ground coffee, after a colleague was caught with a filter mug. A member of leadership asking a teacher if she knew what "professional" meant. A skirts-only school that told an NQT to leave the interview there and then if she'd rather wear trousers. An open plan school with no staff room and hot desking, which sets Dylan off on private schools, class sizes and what the people with actual money choose to do. Staples that had to match the backing paper, coloured in with permanent pen. A fire alarm set off to stop a lunchtime union meeting. Five compulsory parent phone calls a week, logged in three places, because nobody wants to pay for an attendance officer. A suit jacket rule enforced on a woman eight months pregnant. Being told to call the children "clients". And a school where teachers weren't allowed a sip of water in front of a class.
Somewhere in the middle of it Hayden runs a riled-up meter on Dylan and gets him from a two to a nine, and there's some baby news too. Fair warning, the language gets away from us on this one.
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