Teachers and flexible working - thoughts?

[mids2019]

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/dec/21/uk-teachers-should-be-allowed-to-work-from-home-education-secretary-says

I think this sounds like a good idea but it will have any impact on children's education? How will it be managed?

Teachers are supposed to have 10% of the teaching timetable (generally around 25 hours a week) when they are not teaching - this is called 'PPA'.

But most FT teachers work anything between 50 and 70 hours a week, so the time they spend doing their planning, marking, responding to parents, meetings with outside agencies, meeting with colleagues, admin, tracking, and general pointless paperwork, is more than the amount of time spent teaching.

The comment was in reply to Sadcafe asking how teachers could work from home, suggesting that the idea of people taking their PPA time off site, was a bit ridiculous. When clearly lots of this work is done at home already - evenings and weekends. Nobody questions all of those hours being done at home.

At home I have done:

> prep and planning, from short term lesson plans to long term annual plans
> marking and assessment
> data tracker: input, basic analysis and reports
> courses and training which are often online
> writing reports of various forms: annual pupil reports, subject leadership reports, SEND reports
> safeguarding matters
> other subject leadership admin
> communication with parents

There is a lot of admin in teaching. Much of it gets done at home, often well outside of school hours anyway.

During my PPA in school I sit in the staff room and decompress!!

I then pick up the slack before work for an hour, and after work for a couple of hours.

Would only work in primary if there were funding for PPA cover teachers like there uses to be. We now have to leave our classes with TAs. In the younger years it will usually be the class TA so you are effectively an adult down. TAs are great but the majority are not trained teachers and I often have to come back and deal with something. I also have to leave easy filler work so I don't tend to take all my PPA time as then all the other subjects don't get fitted in.

When I was a trainee my PPA used to be taken up covering the primary PPA for our feeder school! And I'd need to plan it myself.

I don't want "work from home". I want to not have to be all things to all people all the time. I want to do fewer than 5 duties a week. I want to be able to actually teach rather than manage MAD behaviour every day.

Think maybe I didn’t read the original article right through as it was clearly about the admin side not the actual teaching, having three daughters who all teach I am well aware of that side of it and how much is done at home, my youngest already takes her ppa at home, I don’t think I was suggesting that was ridiculous at all and for the record, as a now retired nurse, teachers don’t hold the exclusive rights to taking work home to complete

As ever, no teacher has suggested they are the only profession to take work home. The majority of teachers realise most professionals work hard, do over their hours and end up doing work in the evenings.

Agree @Nineandtwenty

Exactly that. I print off everything for the week. And in KS1 it’s a lot of checking that we have enough lolly sticks/black card/green paint/paper plates for the art project coming up.

The PPA /working at home isn't really helpful, IMO. Female staff are leaving because they can't physically get their children to breakfast club and then leg it across town to get to work before registration. A colleague requested not to be a form tutor and had to twist a lot of arms in case it "set a precedent".

I actually find it really helpful because I don't need wrap around care after school one day a week. It's one of the reasons I'm loyal to my current school.

I have seen how challenging teaching can be. Allowing them to mark and plan lessons from home would help create a healthier work-life balance and prevent burnout.