To think 9 day fortnights for teachers is a good idea...

[LadyCrazyCatLady]

...if implemented correctly.

One of the large school trusts local to us have announced that, from September they're aiming for flexible working for teachers within their schools:

The trust said: "We have been focusing on prioritising flexibility for our teachers to support greater work-life harmony.

As a result, we are excited to launch our new flexible working plan which will come into effect in the next academic year (24/25) and includes working towards a nine-day fortnight for teachers.

We want to be bold in our approach. Our ambition is for teachers to be afforded the same flexibility that’s available in many other sectors and now even expected in the post-pandemic world.

Given the nature of teaching, we know that the scale of this flexibility will not always match what others offer outside the sector, but making these changes will go a long way in making a difference.

In line with our deep commitment to self-determination, we want to give our teachers more agency over their roles by offering a flexible working plan that will give them time back.

Nine-day fortnight: We are working towards a nine-day fortnight for teachers without impacting students’ contact time. As far as possible, we want this to be a genuine reduction in working hours and not just trying to fit 10 days of teaching into nine. The analysis we have been conducting shows this is possible in many of our schools.

Remote working: We are pushing forward with a plan that allows remote working during non-contact time, which includes giving more PPA (planning, preparation and assessment) and making it manageable from home or another remote location, and where our teachers want to do this, compressing the free hours or non-contact hours so that they can be away from school for longer periods of time.

Personal days: We want to offer personal days during term time so our teachers are not restricted to only taking time off in the school holidays.

Artificial intelligence: We will look to use technology, where possible, to reduce teachers’ contact time and provide greater flexibility. We want to harness technology more widely to free up more time and allow our best teachers to influence more students than just those physically present in their classrooms."

AIBU to think that, although it would take some major organising, something like this could help with the teacher retention crisis that we currently have in the UK?

So instead of the TA having to do the teacher's job and their own job for the weekly afternoon's PPA for no extra pay it will be a whole day every other week? Vote with your feet TAs! 🤣

Teachers get 10% of their teaching timetable as PPA already - have done for years. That equates to half a day a week for a full time teacher. I’ve worked in schools where the PPA was combined so staff got a day a fortnight to carry out PPA. This is what’s being proposed.

A full time teacher with a full timetable already only teaches 9 days per fortnight.

This is just rearranging PPA I’m afraid. 1 day WFH out of 10 is already offered by some schools. My own does 1/2 day every 5 WFH so no different. This isn’t ground breaking

Maybe you should apply?

Probably best you don’t though, what with you being barely literate and all.

Come be a teacher for 1 day and say all this. I bet you’d especially love only being able to have holidays when they’re 5 times more expensive than any other time. I love that

Hilarious that people on here think the teachers would have an actual day off on the 10th day! I work over 60 hours a week in primary and take home £2187 a month so hardly earn well. I could fill the 10th day with work I have to do 3 times over and still be doing work at the weekend. At half term I'll work at least 3 days. Luckily I love teaching.

Given the numbers of staff leaving, if the trust can make it work then it's a good move in my opinion. They're obviously wanting to try to attract decent staff in a climate where many schools are relying on unqualified and non specialist staff.

Many schools have PPA staff at primary and at secondary the trust obviously feel this is something they can make work.

They may have decided that doing this and overstaffing is cheaper long term than having higher staff absences and high cover costs.

We want to harness technology more widely to free up more time and allow our best teachers to influence more students than just those physically present in their classrooms."

if this is a big trust does this mean have one maths teacher remotely teaching a number of classes at the same time at their own or all the secondary schools with maybe a supervisor in the actual classroom? (Can’t imagine primary working).
Or one teacher plans all the maths lessons and online work then delivered in person by other teachers?

Ah, no. Perhaps you should re read the original post. It specifically says that is NOT the case. Perhaps it needs to be made just a tiny bit more simple for you?

I'd expect the kids to be able to take "personal days" too so they can take holidays out of term time.

This may have helped me stay in teaching. Left this year after 6 years of 60 hour weeks while bringing home the exact same as I do now working in a school library for 21.5 hours a week!
one day at home to crack on and get the prep done would have meant so much to me- and my kids who had to sit around every Saturday doing nothing so I could be glued to my laptop doing all my prep!

I assumed from the article that it would mean the 10th day would be a day off and the PPA would be incorporated, potentially working from home, within the other 9 days.

A day off AND a work from home day a fortnight?

Are children going to get flexible personal days too ?
And how is continuity for children doing alevels or GCSE going to be protected if their specialty teacher is faffing off here and there and only doing f2f teaching 9 days...those children might as well do a 9 day fortnight too

I'd expect the kids to be able to take "personal days" too

Like the birthday days off being discussed on a thread the other day? Or the 8 year old having a crap time being taken to London for a treat? Or the term time holidays?

A friend’s school gives all teachers a day off a week. They’ve committed to this for 3 years. I’m very jealous!

Re planning, I used to spend forever doing this but my current school has resources/presentations in place for pretty much every lesson (all of KS4 and 5 done by me). Planning is still needed, you obviously can’t just chuck every class the same thing, but it’s made life easier. Shame there’s a new specification coming in (again, already) next year with topics that currently aren’t covered 😢

Is that not already a thing in England?

In Scotland, our work can be conducted at a place and time of our choosing. Secondary teachers get roughly equivalent of 1 hour per day of non contact time, although it can be arranged in any way really (for example you might get two afternoons off per week, or you could potentially teach just one class on one day but then be really busy the rest of the time)
Most teachers are timetabled to teach less than this but will be covering absentees or something else (directed)

Any time you don’t have children in front of you can be done from a place of your choosing and doesn’t need to be done during the school day. I often work in the evening for childcare purposes.

I think of prepping and marking as part of teaching, so when the article said "9 days of teaching, not 10 days into 9" I thought it meant the tenth day off.

All I see is a future of more five-lessons-a-day, each day, every day for Learning Cover Supervisors at crap support staff pay scales.

You’re describing condensed hours. That’s not what the press release says.

My dc secondary already runs a 2 week timetable for the students so maybe it would work well there.

I like it!

You could be right. But quite a few of us are obviously cynical and seeing it as faffing about with PPA.

A genuine 9 day fortnight with PPA on top is far more interesting. Depending on the strings attached!

No planning and marking isn't the same as "teaching". It's all the extra prep work, and it's why teaching as a job is so many hours as they are actually teaching during the week and then planning/marking in evenings and weekends etc. (Why I initially left)

You're right in other jobs you may well expect teh essential work to be done as part of the job. So 9 days teaching and 1 day wfh to prep/mark would genuinely be amazing.

I’d love to see what this looks like planned out across a fortnight. In secondary as well as primary.