If others are sending students then you need to request they have someone in the ICT room. The Library always has an assistant and when you are ICT then fine. A student on their own as part of your policy would state that students must be looked after. Those teachers have to be there with the students. You need to look at your school computer use policy in your ICT suites. One place I worked at left the students to work on thier own and they got in and stole all the RAM a few years back. So, if you do not stand up for a member of staff being their while they use it, you are setting yourself up for an incident in the long run.

As for clubs, you can say it is staying open for the club slots. If you library is now closed, why can the library assistant not cover those lunch times like they used to? You do not need to say no and you can close them. Once again if they want it open, they need to assign someone to it, i.e your library assistant who might be doing nothing now the refurb is happening?

 If they are expecting you to staff it then they are breaking European working law. You are entitled to lunch breaks etc

Our school get round that by offering free lunches from the canteen to those who do a lunch duty. (I suppose that depends on how good your canteen is LOL)

I refuse to open ICT rooms at lunchtime on a formal basis, me and my dept are entitled to a break and they wouldnt ask a maths teacher to open a maths classroom! So just because we teach ICT why should we.

If my dept choose to open their rooms on an informal basis then that is their choice. But we never ask them to.  Our rooms are often available after school as we are all often marking/planning etc and pupils (mainly KS4) will drop in to use a machine for an hour or so but again its on the understanding that when we have to/want to go we are not guilted in to staying.

Gosh Ive read that back and it sounds incredibly jobsworth, when I was an NQT I would have bent over backwards but I have learnt in recent years that we should not be guilted in to doing extra unpaid work. Infact I suffer from really bad RSI and my occupational therapist instructed me to ensure I always take lunch and tea breaks. Not just to stop me using a machine for too long but because RSI is often linked to stress and we all need that downtime in the middle of the day. 

H

Michele124:

As for clubs, you can say it is staying open for the club slots. If you library is now closed, why can the library assistant not cover those lunch times like they used to? You do not need to say no and you can close them. Once again if they want it open, they need to assign someone to it, i.e your library assistant who might be doing nothing now the refurb is happening?

Thanks Michele,

What you say makes sense- sort of. I actually misled people with my first post, the library per se isn't closed, just the "computer bit" as it commonly gets called. So the librarian is still, quite rightly, in the library.

Using TA's etc isn't practical, we don't have enough, they are timetabled every lesson and so are entitled to the break and downtime as much as anyone else.

I think we might just close them, and every time a kid complains they can't get on a computer, send them to speak to the member of SLT who is making these awful decisions. That might hammer the point home.

 I have to say it is normally the IT kids that stop back but if pupils from another subject area turn up and Im in the room anyway then I have no problem with them stopping as long as they aren't dicking about and don't keep asking me questions when Im trying to work. But as I mentioned if I need/want to go then I will kick them out.

If I need to go and the other rooms aren't open I often direct them to the local library.

I have to say my school is very good, they don't seem to mind.