We asked for your school's biggest red flags and got nearly a thousand comments on Facebook and hundreds more on Instagram. These are the ones that made us stop and read them twice.
☕ "Ground coffee may only be consumed by members of SLT"
An actual memo, sent after a colleague was discovered with a filter mug. We try to work out what the person writing it thought was rational, and land on two possible answers, neither of them good.
🗣️ "Do you know what professional means?"
The most reacted-to comment of the lot. Why "unprofessional" has become a stick to beat people with, whether calling something out is ever the unprofessional bit, and the time Dylan got pulled up for huffing his way through a staff meeting.
👗 "It's a skirts-only school"
An NQT told at interview that if she wanted to wear trousers she could leave there and then. She left. Thirty-four years ago, and it still starts an argument about who tends to write these rules.
🪑 Open plan, hot desking, no staff room
No fixed classroom, drag your stuff between rooms. Cost cutting dressed up as an innovation, corridor classrooms, and Dylan on why the private schools with all the money somehow never choose any of this.
📎 Colour your staples in to match the backing paper
Triple backing. Permanent pen on the staples. Hayden puts Dylan on a riled-up scale and takes him from a seven to a nine in about ninety seconds.
🔔 The fire alarm that stopped a union meeting
Nothing else to add. It happened.
📞 Five parent calls a week, logged in three places
Doing the attendance officer's job for free, why "it's only ten minutes a week" is how every cut gets absorbed, and a straight answer to everyone who thinks being salaried means your time is worth nothing.
💼 A suit jacket at all times, even at eight months pregnant
🤝 "Call them clients"
Clinton the client is having a difficult afternoon. Hello, mother of client.
🚱 Not allowed to drink in front of the children. Not even a sip.
Toilets, water bottles, metal flasks vibrating across the floor, and why a rule can be different for the adult who talks for six hours a day.
⚠️ Strong language throughout on this one.🐘 Free Maths Zoo arithmetic worksheet generator: tools.mathszoo.app
Join the WhatsApp community: https://chat.whatsapp.com/KrwVWGO5WZF7UqrSklvGZd
