Covering means that the person is appointed temporarily to cover the duties of another officer who is holding the same appointment but on a permanent basis. Once the permanent appointment holder returns from their period of absence, the covering appointment holder will relinquish the appointment.

Internal means that the person is appointed to hold that position as the main appointment holder (rather than covering for somebody else). But that officer has not cleared the appointment formalities such as cluster interview, or not reached GEO4 yet, or for any other reason cannot be fully appointed yet.

A primary school teacher here. I echo the sentiments of this writer. There's just too much admin and event planning to do over the weekends and there's absolutely no time to do tuition, unless you're not planning to climb.

Oca
 

Hi All,

I'm wondering if getting OCA since 1st year of service does helps in my career progression? I've gotten individual award in 2nd year of service and the rest of the 6 years are team award. A different OCA award every year.

For individual award, it is good. Besides having the money to spend 😬, it also means that there are people who recognised your contributions towards the school. So it is a positive indicator that you are seen and heard. For group oca, it is common. Even free loaders within teams can receive that, depending on how willing people are to nominate the team, and how the product impacted the school.

For career progression wise, first promotion is default cohort promotion. Since you have been in the service for 8 years, you will know how you are progressing base on your promotion, or appointment if any. We are likely from the same batch. I am geo5 for 2 years.

The point here for a "lazy" RO is simply one that avoids writing such reports altogether.

An officer who slogged his guts out = Performance Grade C
An officer doing the bare minimum = Performance Grade C

Both also no need write reports. And because of this, the entire department just moves to fulfill bare minimums only. Arrows are shot to the new officers who do not know of such "department culture".

Also, it would seem that being "old" and "experienced" is very advantageous to some ROs since other KPs may not dare or wish to speak up against their decisions.

If let's say your situation is valid, this would be like the entire school (At least the ranking panel) is against the officer. Because the RO does not write the report, and supposedly, the ranking panel helps to ensure that such ROs get found out but since they 'conspire' to help each other out because of the 'old' and 'experienced' RO, then I would say that the officer should change school. However, go to the P and report all these first. Before you apply for posting.

But, usually the case will be that someone else in the ranking panel (who may want to backstab that lazy RO) will go to the VP/P who is that RO's RO to badmouth. And usually these things get found out quite easily. It is more common to see people in the panel shooting each other's JH down based on what they have observed, as compared to everyone covering up for someone.

Also can I just add, slogging your guts out doesn't mean A or B. It really depends on whether what you have been doing, are effective, value adds to the school etc. Someone who does not do much, but has good ideas and implements them effectively and efficiently, can easily get a better grade than someone who only knows how to put in like 200% of his time and effort, but achieve nothing. This is about performance, not effort grade.

Enrichment Programmes
 

Hi Teachers! I'd like to humbly ask. What is an approach that primary schools are more receptive to when vendors are reaching out to them?

I am fairly positive that it brings about certain conveniences to teachers and value to students as I have received comments such as "that's very cheap" & "this is actually a pretty good approach" from a science HOD.

From what I understand, Q3 is the best time to reach out as curriculum planning week has to be done before December? However, after reaching out to primary schools via cold emails, there were only 4 schools that were interested.

After reading previous threads in the forum, the workload of teachers seems insane. The last thing I want to do is add on to it. Does anyone have advice on the approach for a smoother integration?

Usually the end year reviews by department, which also addresses the vendor programmes etc, are only done after end of year exams, meaning late Oct - early Nov, or like now. So if you approach them in Q3, they may not be able to respond to you yet given that things may still not be firmed up. Even budgetting is also done in Oct-Nov. So I would say the best time to approach is actually after Sep holidays. Because even though teachers will be busy with revision and then a truckload of admin, but at least you send at a time where things are more firmed up (e.g. a known budget to the Music dept on engaging a certain AMIS programme (decided during review))

Thank you so much for your insights! Indeed I have been getting a little more response lately as compared to Sep-Oct.

Relax, friends.

Like I’ve said. It’s just based on what my own circle of teacher friends are doing. There is definitely a higher % of pri sch teachers giving tuition, for my personal group of friends.

Pri sch t have their own difficulties eg more dealing w parents and like mentioned by some unhappy person previously - those monitor sch bus stuff and whatnot.