locallass

It's not a 'meme', it's a thing teachers do. They mark sets of 30 exercise books. Sometimes they also set online homework and all sorts of other exciting modern stuff, but most parents seem to want their children to be set handwritten tasks in exercise books and have them marked by teachers and most teachers find that is the best way to monitor progress. Anyway, it's not about teachers being different really - the issue applies to anyone who is working on the site and that will probably be as many non-teaching as teaching staff. And yes, of course people all over London commute to their jobs via public transport but generally less so when their jobs aren't in the centre of town. The East Dulwich Hospital site is not like working in the City or some other central location with a huge number of straightforward transport links centred on it. It is in a suburb which is not particularly easy to get to via public transport. And as a teacher at another school in the area, I can confirm that it is hugely difficult to find affordable housing in reasonable commuting distance. We lost three excellent and experienced members of staff from our department last year because they wanted family homes and that meant moving too far away to be able to travel into work each morning. We have replaced all three of them with young newly qualified staff who are living in house shares. They're great, but's not really sustainable to run a school entirely on nqts. I certainly don't think it's a good idea to have lots of people driving - I live locally and I know that the traffic is already a nightmare round there in the mornings - but it doesn't seem a very good idea to make it impossible for staff to park anywhere unless you can think of an alternative. Lay on a staff coach? Insist they all live on the 37 bus route? Recruit only the partners of bankers and lawyers who can afford to live in SE22/24?

If you want a school in your local community with good teachers and support staff you're either going to have to accept them driving in from surrounding areas and parking somewhere, or you're going to have to offer them homes near enough to walk/cycle in at a price payable on their wages. House prices in this area are so far out of the reach of most school staff and the transport links are pretty tricky to the EDH site - of course lots of them are going to drive. Unless you want an entire school staffed by early twenty somethings living in house shares and leaving the minute they're old enough to have a place of their own. It's all a bit unseemly: We want a shiny new school for our kids. It must be right near our incredibly expensive houses so our kids get in, not other people's. It must have fantastic facilities for our kids so no car park. And we definitely don't want any annoying teachers parking on our streets. So the teachers better live way out where they can afford a house and then get the train before dawn and trek down to the school site in time to provide our children with a world class education for the day before they lug their marking on their 90 minute walk/bus/train commute home. Charming. I'd definitely want to work there.