Back to school, the return…..

Today was the first day back at school.
Horrible.

And that was without the kids being in. It was training day hell today, where all the teachers are running around trying to get everything sorted and ready for the rest of the week. And of course, they want everything NOW (or sooner).
We did explain to them last term that this term was going to be almost impossible. We're starting not one but TWO completely new courses for Year 10 to do at GCSE, Applied Science & Core Science.
Applied Science was trailed a little bit last year with just two groups, and it was hell. It's very, very practically intensive, takes ages to get everything ready and uses a shitload of equipment that we haven't got.
This year, we've got 9 groups doing it.

So we worked it out to be something like a 50%+ increase in workload. And this is the year that one of our technicians has changed her role and now spends half the day being the Science administrator.

So, that’s much more work and less man hours to do it in.
Recipe for disaster isn’t it?

It’s going to be fun in a few weeks when it all really hits the fan. We tend to prep equipment for the day ahead, and very quickly it’s going to be obvious that the workload is too much. We’ll probably manage a couple of weeks till it goes tits up, but then one day we’ll find that we haven't been able to get all of the next days prep done. So we’ll have to continue it on the actual day of the lesson. This will then mean that we don’t get a lot of the following day preped, until eventually, ineviatbly, we catch up to the lesson we’re meant to be prepping in advance for.
At this point we have to just give in and declare the week a write off and stop all practicals for at least one or two days.
This should happen about every two to three weeks I reckon.

And of course, the teachers, being a thoughful, intelligent, professional lot are going to understand our predicament and sympathise with us.
OR
They’re going to keep coming into the prep room demanding to know why their equipment isn’t ready NOW.
I know which one I think they'll be doing, how about you?