Excellent post from LokiBear.
The problem is the massive underfunding and recruitment and retention crisis. If education was properly funded and workloads reasonable, there would be no need desperate initiatives to show some kind of support for teachers, which in reality are a drop in the ocean and don't deal with the problem of week-by-week over-work and stress and increasing difficulty to deliver what is required and in fact the growing demands with less resources.
I think school management is desperate. They have to manage with unrealistic budgets and unrealistic demands. They push them onto the teachers, and when people are at breaking point, in a bid to do something.....just something to try and alleviate he pressure, they offer a day off (which as has been said, doesn't mean less teaching days during the year) during the longest term. It doesn't solve the deep rooted problems at all, and in fact does divert attention from the real issues, convincing the public that teachers get a better and easier deal than other workers, and annoys people who only see a day to have to organise childcare (even though months and months of notice was probably given) rather than anything beyond the end of their noses.
Teachers don't want a day off in November, for shopping or anything else in fact. They just want to be given the resources and time to carry out their job to a high standard, so that the children can be given a quality education (not always happening at the moment because of cuts and teacher recruitment crisis) and they can have some semblance of work-life balance.
What other sops will we see being given to teachers in coming years to try and make them feel something is being done to help them? Will there be cakes on Fridays? Will there be a mindfulness course run after school? Will there be a staff choir set up to run after the parents evening that finishes at 9pm? Will there be free sandwiches provided at late night school events? Perhaps, but I don't think those sops can in anyway cover for the problems teachers and support staff face which come from having to teach a complex class which needs lots if 1-2-1 support when all of the TAs have been axed due to funding cuts, or when the targets set by KS2 data are impossible to achieve and result in no pay rise for the 3rd year in a row, or when a teacher has to teach a GCSE subject they know nothing about because the school cannot recruit a qualified person, or when a teacher finds their preparation time allowance has been cut in half because it's the only way schools can afford to cover all classes, or that their classes have grown by an extra 5 students generating more marking and reporting and recording every week, or that the marking requirements and policy of the school have changed, adding an extra hour to every set of marking, or the curriculum has changed again meaning everything and all resources have to be re-created again. I think teachers just want enough time to do a good job (and they expect to work outside the 8.30-3.30 time slot - just not 60 hours per week) and to feel that they have the resources to do it. If that were the case, it would still be tiring, but people wouldn't be at breaking point and going off on lomg term sick or leaving the profession.
But until the government addresses these issues and until parents and the public recognise the issues and pressurise the government to do something, schools will just have to continue dreaming up pretty crap initiatives to try and boost morale.