A week in the Life of a School Admin Assistant

 A year ago I started working in a primary school as an admin assistant. I have worked in administration for 15 years but nothing can prepare you for working in a primary school. No two days are ever the same and you never know what the day is going to bring.  I have decided to let you know what a week in my life looks like and how unlike any other role I have had previously.

I have jobs that I do on a daily basis that you would expect such as taking messages, updating registers, chasing payments for trips and school dinners, photocopying and filing so I am not going to put those in, I am just going to let you know the things you would not expect to be doing as an administrator in a typical office job

Monday –  Nurse

 An unusual amount of absences due to illness and lots of parents coming in with prescription medicine that needs to be given to the children during the day. Each parent must complete a form detailing the medicine, dosage and time to be administered. Most of them are an hour before eating so at 10.45 I dutifully go round the different classes and collect 4 children who need their medication. It was also a day for giving out Calpol as I had messages from 3 teachers asking for parents to be called to get permission for the children to have Calpol for various reasons. Each administration of medication needs paperwork completing and in the case of the school Calpol a form being sent home with the child for the parents to sign and return. I also had to send a child home who had vomited in the reception area as well as help clean it up.

Tuesday – Photographer’s assistant. 

Today was the day for the annual class photos and I had to accompany the photographer to find a suitable location to take the photos outside as we had a visit from a bird sanctuary which was taking place in the hall where the photos are normally taken. I am so glad it isn’t raining or cold. Despite having a reminder sent out the day before about wearing full school uniform there are a number of children in each class who are not wearing jumpers so I had to raid the lost property box to find jumpers that fit and looked decent. I had to change the order of the classes as Year 5 were doing tests and when the photographer was ready for Year 3 they were just about to go on their break.  Putting some of them in height order as well was interesting as some of the children were a little bit deluded about how tall they were.

Wednesday – Craft consultant.

I was persuaded before Christmas to run a sewing group before school for some of the pupil premium children who had not accessed any other of the clubs and Wednesday was the chosen day, so at 8.00am I had my little group of 9 girls all eager to carry on making a zipped pouch (all hand sewn as there are no sewing machines). All of them need to work on making the stitches smaller so that the pouch isn’t going to fall apart.  In the afternoon I was supervising the year 6’s who were using hot glue guns for a D & T project. I had come prepared with some finger protectors which I use at home.

Thursday – Trip assistant

In the morning I accompanied the year 3’s to a Singing festival in the festival hall which meant a trip on the tram with 60 seven year olds. They were very well behaved and they amused the other passengers with a game that one of the teachers devised where they had to be statues between certain points. Although I am biased, they were also the best performers as they all gave full energy to the songs they sang and some even had a little boogie whilst singing. On my return to school at lunch time I was greeted by 3 very large boxes containing new books for the library all of which needed to be checked against the order and stamping. There ended up over 100 books in the order so that took quite a while to check and stamp.

Friday – Dish washer 

On Wednesday the dishwasher in the school kitchen had broken down so various members of staff had been roped in during the week to assist in the clearing of the plates and today was my turn. I wasn’t actually washing the dishes I was scraping and rinsing the plates. My reward was a chocolate chip cookie. I also had to get involved in a safeguarding issue involving the police and social workers which took up quite a bit of time.

The diversity of things I can get involved in is what makes this job so enjoyable. If ever I am feeling a little down being around the children always cheers me up with the enthusiasm and quirks and I look forward to going into work instead of dreading it. I do also enjoy the extra holidays, just not the increased cost of going away.

Although I have given you an insight into the aspects of the role that are fun or unusual there are also the sadder aspects where you are dealing with the fallout from family breakdown, abuse, poverty and neglect. There have been a number of times when all I have wanted to do is take a child home and look after them in the way they should be looked after because their lives at home most people would find horrible. Working at the reception desk also means that you have a lot on interaction with parents and some of them will tell you their life stories and you end up almost being an agony aunt as they tell you about financial difficulties, issues with the child's siblings or other parent or family member and you end up either wanting to give them a hug or a slap depending on the issue or parent.

Working in a school office has been my absolute favourite admin role and I cannot ever see me leaving the school until I retire. It doesn’t feel like work even when the office has lots of work on and I relish the opportunity of interacting with the children and getting to know them.