Do you get relief?

[Pm706Narrogin]

Just out of curiosity. And how long would you be away before your school looks at getting relief in?

I ask because historically I've never been relieved. Our other tech just works alone. I only message our HoD as a heads up but they've never gone to the trouble of getting relief for one day.

Then last week my car decided to be a pain. I messaged the business manager as well to check what leave I put that under and she said I should also message the relief coordinator when they've never made an attempt to get relief in the past. Hell, the rest of the week I was on my own cause our other tech was sick and didn't get relief.

Plus a PD day has just come up next term and even with a month in advance, we've been told we can go but we're not getting relief in the lab.

Just feels like very conflicting messaging. "Oh we've never tried to get a day's cover but here's another person you should message if you're off so we can do nothing about it"

[Labbie]

I had five weeks off once, Doe NSW school, and I cried when I got back, it was a ___________ mess. No one did a thing. Mine you if front office has a few away sick, lets just pull the labbie out of Science, she can answer the phone. Dept of Education= DoE.

[RosalieL]

I'm in a small private school. Back in 2022 I had a lot of time off due to a variety of illnesses ripping through the family (because, you know, all 5 of us couldn't possibly catch anything at the same time!). They looked into hiring a casual then but nothing came of it. At a different school, I took 3 weeks off for my wedding/honeymoon well in advance and had that deducted from my hours (so it was leave without pay but still averaged out over the year) and because I wasn't technically getting paid for it they employed someone else (a teacher's son who was studying at uni) to cover the three weeks and keep things ticking over. I did as much as I could in advance though to keep it easy for him. He was pretty good and aside from rearranging a few things (some were improvements, some not), it worked well.

I have never been replaced at either school when I was just sick or on PD or anything.

[Pm706Narrogin]

I had five weeks off once, Doe NSW school, and I cried when I got back, it was a ___________ mess. No one did a thing. Mine you if front office has a few away sick, lets just pull the labbie out of Science, she can answer the phone. Dept of Education= DoE.

My word that sounds terrible! Both the NSW practice of classifying lab techs as the same as office staff and not getting any relief in for 5 weeks.

I have never been replaced at either school when I was just sick or on PD or anything.

This was my understanding as well. There just isn't the relief staff in the system to cover us at short notice the way teachers and education assistants have. Generally you'd only get relief if you were taking an extended period of leave and the lab would be in chaos.

Which makes the request to contact the relief coordinator so bizarre. I should contact someone who is not gonna do anything anyway? If she hadn't rung my mobile number this week, I would've just assumed she didn't actually know who was messaging

[Anna Z]

We only get lab relief staff in if someone is on LSL. For the random days here and there, nope... even for a week or 2 of sickness...... nothing.

LSL is generally planned well in advance and we are able to get in a casual and train them up. We have a little pool of past students who we can pull in. Sometimes you just need bodies in the labs, not necessarily highly trained.

[LabbieSeth]

I only get a relief in if I organise the cover myself.

So if I know I'm going to be taking a day, or a couple days off, I'll message a few labbies I know around the area that aren't full-time and ask if they are interested.
However, if I call in sick the night before or morning of, a relief isn't organised. On the days that the office have a full set of staff, they might send one over here to do some general cleaning for a few hours which can be great as they pack and unpack the dishwasher for me buuuut they also just tip the chemicals solutions down the drain or solids into the bin...

[Anastasia]

I'm at an Independent school and took 5 weeks off for LSL last year having given 2 terms notice. I wasn't relieved, some teachers helped themselves to pre prepared solutions and equipment but most just didn't do pracs. The cleanup wasn't too bad when I returned. When I am sick teachers just postpone pracs..

[Wayne]

In 2023 I took 3 weeks LSL and was replaced. The replacement didn't do a great job.
I had all of 4th term off last year (2024) with an unexpected ilness and no one came in and did my job.
This is my first week back this term after another 3 weeks LSL and wasn't replaced.

I am the onlt Lab Tech at the school.

[Pm706Narrogin]

That sounds horrible Wayne.

What do the teachers do if they don't have a lab tech?

[Wayne]

Last year grade 8's didn't do any pracs in the chemistry unit as I wasn't there. Obviously they found chemistry very boring. The other grades the teachers had to get it themselves, none of the other grades were doing chemistry.

This year the teachers had to have their pracs in by the end of term 1 so I could set them up for them to use while I was away. The grade 10 teachers were the only ones that had their request in on time, so they were the only teachers that had pracs set up for them. The others were left to fend for themselves.

[Pm706Narrogin]

I'm surprised your Head of Department hasn't raised that with the suits at the top.

Weeks at a time or a whole term without pracs doesn't sound great. And teachers grabbing less hazardous/complicated pracs still creates extra workload for them.

Makes a great statement about the work we do vs the perceived value outside of Science though