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?

There is a TES article about this which talks about dynamic timetabling and a different approach to student groups.

It also says that Dixons have skewed the budget towards teaching allowing more PPA by reducing other costs. Wondering what that means - less admin support? Or economies of scale to get a good deal on IT support/facilities (bit like LEAs used to do?)

Wow @easylikeasundaymorn what on earth do you do and can I train?!

Schools can't get supply teachers to covered at the moment never mind this. Pipe dream

In the modern world, it’s getting harder to get anything done if you don’t have flexibility in your job. I get that teachers are not the only people who have to show up at a workplace face to face with others and unable to take a quick phone call or make one (or even a slow phone call- hanging on the line for 45 mins trying to get through, anyone?) or engage with the enormous bureaucracy and endless back and forth which seems to be required to deal with your mortgage, a repairman, hmrc, travel, the doctor etc etc.
These demands are one reason why so many people seek to wfh part of the time. If teaching has no flexibility, people will choose another job where they can live their life as well as work.
Even people’s social lives nowadays have high expectations and some people have weddings etc on weekdays. If you are a teacher you can’t attend these.

You've not factored in the 9 day fortnight for the teachers covering…

Great idea, the sooner we treat the people educating our futures with the respect and appreciation they deserve the better.

I have - the 1.5 FTE teachers who would “float” (could be 3x0.5, 1xFTE plus 0.5, or whatever other combo required)

1 FTE would cover teachers A through to I on their “day off” (let’s call this teacher K) and then have their day off on Friday of week 2.

Teacher L could cover the non contact time for teacher A, B and C one day, D, E and F the next, J, H and I the next, plus cover teacher K for one afteroon per week. Their timetable could be the same each week rather than alternating.

Im not sure if it would be exactly 1.5 fte but it could be worked out relatively simply with a spreadsheet

@BarelyLiterate

I would imagine it's to encourage people to stay in the job. It's expensive to recruit & younger staff just don't stay unfortunately. I've noticed that older staff in their 40s & 50s will just get on and do extra. Younger staff are definitely questioning why & don't step forward to do extra like my generation did (just to get experience). I think younger staff see their friends getting into better paid jobs with flexible working where they can wfh couple of days a week & maybe they go to gym those days or something similar.

I don't think primary classes would be affected as they have PPA anyway. My concern would be for TAs & whether they are expected to cover this.

Lots of jobs have the potential to work overtime and get TOIL - local council, police, manufacturing, civil service. I think if you can get 2 days/month TOIL on top of bank holidays & regular holidays it's not far off teacher hols. 25 days leave, 8 days bank hols plus 24 days TOIL. That's around 10 (almost 11) weeks off a year. Nobody seems to care about that 🤷🏻‍♀️

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."

This bit sounds shit tbh

I do think something desperately needs to be done as none of my kids’ friends (all confident young graduates) want to go into teaching. They’ve seen what it’s done to their own teachers/parents/family and want a job with flexibility and prospects, not one that’s on a hamster wheel Monday-Friday offering burnout and anti-anxiety medication!

My own DC wants to be able to work from home a couple of days a week and doesn’t want to be micromanaged-those things are unlikely to happen any time soon in teaching. They’ve seen so many of our friends work-life balance transformed since Covid with hybrid working so the holidays that teachers get are no longer such a a draw, when you can work flexi hours to build up overtime and lose the commute.

The 9 day fortnight would need a significant cash injection to function which I know my LA school can’t afford (we are currently in another round of redundancies) but MATs do have more flexibility in some ways.

I don't think primary classes would be affected as they have PPA anyway.

This appears to be on top of PPA though, so a primary class would be taught by a TA for two afternoons a week (as now-often topic work/PSHE or PE with cheap sports apprentices) as normal PPA but they’d then have to cover a further whole day which would involve maths/english/phonics/marking etc. It would need a big cash injection to support it.

Yep Shiney - I agree already we are losing teachers all over the place (my kids primary many classes had an hlta take the class a whole day a week)

And you're right it's a ticking time bomb as it becomes a less desirable profession for those coming through now.

So we're haemorageing teachers AND not replacing them.

Teachers haven't been listened to for years shouting about this (noble on here for one) and warning about this but instead we're heading into crisis.

More schools run by draconian "No excuses" detentions at will, and online homework and cookie cutter lessons delivered by low skilled staff

Tell me you've never written a secondary school timetable without telling me you've never written a secondary school timetable.

This might work in Primary however.

Yeah, that example obviously wouldn’t work in a secondary school where teachers can’t just teach each others classes.

For secondary schools I’d imagine you’d need to run a two-week timetable where each subject had the same day off every two weeks. This might require more use of double periods; like what happened during covid (each pupil did 3 subjects per day)

Are you so blinded that you haven't heard of the mental health crisis in the teaching world due to stress and workload. There's been high profile suicides in the media several times and they're just the ones we hear about. I know a lot of teachers and a scarily high proportion of them are on anxiety meds or antidepressants just go be able to cope with what the work entails.

You need to open your eyes. I'm not saying other professions aren't stressful too but teaching is out of this world stressful and that is being shown in the recruitment crisis currently being seen.

A 9 day fortnight is a fantastic idea.

Teacher here - I think this is a terrible idea. Pay us more and cut out the pointless paperwork if you want to solve the recruitment crisis. Ultimately students need good quality teachers in the classroom. I fear this will end up the first step towards a hellish education system where TAs are left in charge of large classes of students all plonked in front of computer screens.

I'd think something more beneficial would be taking all the other extra crap off you, so your sole focus was on teaching

The introduction of PPA brought with it a shedload of extra work that you could ‘just do in your PPA’. I think I’d rather have no PPA and do none of the extra work! Most of it is completely pointless.

There is more talk about 23/26 tasks (whatever it is) being banned for teachers, which is again pointless as it’s presumably stuff that has still got to be done and now there’s no support staff left to do it-unlike when it was banned the first time round when I had a full time TA!

There does need to be a way to make teaching more flexible and attractive, though. Nothing will change unless there is more money and massive Ofsted changes, I think, sadly. The Conservatives won’t budge on either of those and Labour seem more worried about making primary schools offer breakfast clubs and supervise children’s teeth being cleaned than keeping teachers.

Just a detail, but I work for a council and we've had our TOIL taken away. Rewards for overtime in the public sector are hard to come by!

I'm guessing this is just rearranging PPA into one day a fortnight? It's a nice idea in theory, but in reality, if it means that the other 9 days will be non-stop teaching all day, those days would be very full on. I'm exhausted after teaching 5 period days, so to me, it would be horrendous to have 3-4 in a row. I can see how some people would prefer it though.

The idea of personal days (assuming they're paid!) is a good idea however. Not being able to take a day off during term time is one of the reasons I'm looking to get out of teaching at the moment.

It's a good idea. You can't plan services on the stupid idea that because I don't get it, you shouldn't either. It's just petty jealousy. Is there evidence that teachers are burnt out? Yes. Are they hard to retain? Yes? Are they badly paid? Yes. Is there a shortage? Certainly. Do it.

They have said it will be a genuine reduction in teaching hours

So paid FTE but teach the equivalent of 9 days

It will be a nightmare to timetable but I think it's a great idea

Personal days I'm not so sure about. That will cost a lot of money in supply. Unless it's not any extra day off but they swap their PPA day. There's 100 teaching staff at my school. There's no way they could cover an additional 100 days on top of training, medical, sickness.

I'd support anything the teachers think would work that also supports kids learning. As long as at the same time they manage crap teachers out the door.

@WeveGotThis

Just a detail, but I work for a council and we've had our TOIL taken away. Rewards for overtime in the public sector are hard to come by!

Oh that's a shame & it will just make it harder to recruit. Presumably previously you could maybe work longer a couple of days then finish early a couple of days to do school pick up, or take day off for sports day etc. It will just make it harder to recruit. TOIL doesn't cost anything to the company but is a huge perk!

Where I am in UK teachers get paid for 40 days holiday. The other weeks schools are closed are not paid. Teachers are paid for 9 months, spread over 12 pays and paid monthly. Other local authority staff get 40 paid holiday days too. Feel free to study a 4 year honours degree, a years post grad diploma and complete 2 years probation to join!