Going part time as a teacher damages your career. Time for national guidelines?

[noblegiraffe]

According to 70% of teachers polled by Teacher Tapp, going part time will damage your career prospects.

Given that we are in the midst of a teacher recruitment and retention crisis, this would seem remarkably short-sighted.

At my school part timers are not allowed to apply for TLRs. Part time requests are granted, but then part timers are treated as an inconvenience who should suck up whatever timetable they’re given. I suspect that SLT, who are vast majority male, would argue that they actually treat part timers well.

I’ve found the Burgundy Book to be spectacularly unhelpful as it is written with the assumption that part timers have full days off. Part timers who have full days off can’t be directed to work an INSET day that falls on their day off or should be paid extra to do so, same if a parents’ evening falls on their day off. But if you are a part timer who works every day, then you can definitely be expected to work a parents’ evening/INSET on a day where you only work P1 and 2. You can be expected to attend meetings after school on a day when you finish teaching at lunch.

There’s absolutely no requirement to ensure that your timetable doesn’t have you teaching P3 and nothing else that day, which is a nightmare for childcare, or that you are teaching P1 and P5 with the rest of the day unpaid.

How does your school treat part timers? Should the Burgundy Book be updated to reflect the reality of part time working and to create national guidelines?

[BackforGood]

It depends on the school. I have not suffered career-wise since going part time and my Head has continued to fund my professional development. Maybe I’m just lucky.

This ^

I think maybe there is a different culture in Primary - we don't have the same timetabling nightmares.

Yes, I've been on SMTs whilst PT.

[LolaSmiles]

We have a lot of part time staff and it works well because they are treated well. There are middle leaders and senior leaders who are part time or have been part time.

I don't mind split classes if the person I'm sharing with is diligent and proactive. Unfortunately, I've had situations where a class has been 50/50 and the part timer has tried to argue that I should be marking all assessments and doing the reports because I'm full time. It had to go the HOD to have a workload shares for split classes documented as far as certain colleagues were concerned. They had that sort of do as little as possible attitude even when they were full time though: part time simply became their trump card they'd try to play.

[likeafishneedsabike]

I would feel the same @Useruseruserusee but I wonder if any male full timer has ever felt guilty that their wife can’t go for a promotion due to looking after a young child?

[Useruseruserusee]

DH and I are both teachers, he is secondary part time and I am full time SLT in primary.

He had no problem going part time but his career progression has finished. When a HOD job came up his HT said that he would love him to have it, but only if he went full time. As DH had gone part time to look after our youngest child, this made me feel very guilty.

[Phineyj]

Seven out of 10 of my Humanities department is part time. We aren't treated worse and we can be HODs. However, it's a small private school so they don't actually need FT for everything. For instance, I can teach all my subject in 0.75. It rebalances the power somewhat. We've never had a PT SLT member though as far as I know.

I have often wondered if it is even legal to treat part time workers less favourably as many schools do, but I suspect we all count as part time technically due to the long holidays. I wonder if anyone's ever brought an indirect sex discrimination case though?

[Piggywaspushed]

No particular reason I don't think noble. They are more 'encouraged' to be part time because they don't want to lay staff off altogether and the uptake is in decline. More of them work part days but for all I know that is by choice. Every single MFL teacher is pt.

[ploughingthrough]

I went part time while my DC were very little, and even took 18months out before returning part time.
I went full time again when they were a bit bigger and it hasn't stopped me from progressing and getting promotions. I did move around schools a bit to achieve this though- I think you can get pigeonholed in the school you went part time in.

[shopaholic85]

I've been P/T (secondary) for the last three years, at three different schools.
School 1: 0.4 job share with lots of split classes but only one colleague to liaise with. Female HT very supportive of p/t staff but SLT full of men.
School : 0.5 over three days with lots of split classes. Finished at break one day a fortnight and did not have to attend meetings that day. Deputy HoD was 0.8.
School 3: 0.5 over 2 full days and one half day. Only one split class and allowed to manage which meetings I attend/how long I stay. I'm on a leadership course to support progression and I feel valued as an experience teacher. TT discussion already started for next year. This is a challenging school, but I will stay because of the way P/T staff are treated. However, I still think I would be expected to go full-time for any promotion.

[MaybeDoctor]

I left teaching because my application for part-time working after maternity leave was turned down. I was primary SLT. I then found it almost impossible to get a part-time teaching job that would work with childcare, even in London.

I felt as if I had been chewed up and spat out by the school system. It made me so angry that I actually wrote an article about it for a national publication. The extraordinary waste of it all also astounded me: I had been trained, inducted and sent on all kinds of training, including an NCSL course. What a short-term way of thinking...

Since leaving teaching I have successfully worked part-time for nearly nine years. My skills are valued and my life is my own.

[noblegiraffe]

Why not MFL?

[Piggywaspushed]

I wouldn't say heaven exactly in terms of treatment and access to promotion but my school definitely works on full days off for part time staff (except MFL ,I think).

[noblegiraffe]

I’m having some serious timetable envy here. Our timetablers would swear that what you have, MsDragon is completely impossible.

I’m wondering if every other school out there is a heaven for part time work, but given that we know the group most likely to leave teaching is women in their 30s, and that the rate of part time work in teaching is well below the national average, that can’t be true.

[MsAwesomeDragon]

We actually manage without splitting classes at all, in maths anyway. I think there are some split classes in science as they have an actual job share rather than just 2 pt staff, so are timetabled as one person and share out the week between the 2 of them.

We see ks3 classes 3 times a week, so that's manageable within 3 days. We see ks4 classes 4 times a week, and pt staff only ever have one ks4 class at a time so it puts fewer constraints on the timetable. Anyone on 0.8 gets one full day off. People on 0.6 get one full day and 2 half days off if that's their preference. Otherwise they get one full day and 5 lessons at the beginning or end of the day if they'd prefer that. Nobody ever has trapped time where they teach say P1 and 3 but aren't paid for P2, that just wouldn't happen.

It IS possible for pt staff to be treated fairly with the timetable, it just takes a clever timetabler (ours is the cleverest person I've met, and was trained by the second cleverest person I've ever met). We've had a mathematician as timetabler for the past 20 years and I may be biased but I do believe the timetable should be in the hands of someone with a mathematical mind as it's like a really huge complicated sudoku, with some computing involved too.

I think our head insists on pt staff being put first because his wife is one of our pt teachers and it makes his life easier if she's at home more often (that may make me very cynical)

[Piggywaspushed]

Yes but the person who doesn't come in til break has certain issues which mean people are treading carefully. It's not the norm. She would not be after a TLR.

The other effect on part time staff in our dept is lack of A Level teaching. Not always true but certainly someone on less that one day out a week would not usually get A Level.

[noblegiraffe]

Actually, that’s pretty galling, timetabled to be in every day and then told you can’t apply for a TLR as you are part time...

[noblegiraffe]

we definitely don't put pt staff first

You’ve got someone who doesn’t pitch up till breaktime! For years I couldn’t even get a full day off on a 0.6 timetable.

[Piggywaspushed]

I think my issue with split classes is there are now so many and it does increase workload as we have to liaise. It also definitely - in my department- has had knock on effects on continuity and behaviour. It causes carnage with parents'' evening booking systems, too.

It does depend though. I bumble along very happily with the colleague share a class with.

DH's school ahs only just started allowing part time (big of them!). But they will not countenance shared classes (other than sixth form). However, what they do have is a brilliant timetabler (who happens also to be a mathematician) who can sort all this out.

That said, my DH is fully preparing to do parts of days. That's OK with him but would be awful for lots of teachers.

[Piggywaspushed]

Oh no ,that's not the opposite to my school : we definitely don't put pt staff first! That's awesome's.

[noblegiraffe]

Piggy my school does the opposite to yours and insists the timetable comes first so part-timers are screwed when it comes to actually reasonable timetables that fit in with childcare.

We still have split classes.

We did have a part-timer leave in the summer due to a refusal to amend his timetable because the school wanted to avoid splitting classes. The (experienced and excellent) teacher could not be replaced and now the classes they would have had have had supply teachers since September. Surely a split class would have been preferable?

I don’t mind split classes, in maths generally I’ll e.g. teach fractions and the other teacher will teach algebra so we just get on with our own thing once the topics have been shared. And there are some classes that I thank god have been split because seeing them 4 times a week would have been the death of my teaching career.

[Piggywaspushed]

All that sounds great but does it not have the knock on effect of lots of split classes?

We have a colleague who does not work til break and the impact on the rest of us 9soem full and some part time) is pretty awful.

[MsAwesomeDragon]

We had a part time deputy up til last year, but she moved schools and went back to ft after the move. One of our current deputies was part time when she applied for the job (she was a part time hod in a smaller department) but went up to ft when she became deputy.

Our "ordinary" classroom teachers who are pt have either full or half days off and are treated very fairly in working conditions. The timetable is designed with the part time teachers at the forefront with their preferences taken into account. One pt teacher doesn't like mornings so he is on a 0.6 timetable, never teaching before p3. A few others have requested fixed days off for a few years in a row due to childcare arrangements and those have been honoured. Inset, meetings and parents evenings are pro rata, so if you're on a 0.6 timetable you do 0.6 inset days (some are full days, others are twilights on different days so all part time staff can find enough to attend on their working days)

In general, my school is pretty good in its treatment of pt staff, and a couple of smaller TLRs are held by part timers. I have heard horrific stories about how part timers are treated at other schools in the area. It would be great to have national guidelines for how pt staff should be treated.

[noblegiraffe]

The KS4 TLR used to be shared in my dept many years ago, and the school got an amazing deal because they had two great teachers putting in way more than 0.5 each into the job.

Getting a part time TLR for doing a full time responsibility is ridiculous. The government keeps banging on about how schools should encourage more flexible working but I’ve never heard any talk of updating the conditions.

[ValancyRedfern]

Our most successful department (50%+ grade 9-7 year on year in a comprehensive) has been run by a job share of two HODs on 2 and 3 days for over 10 years. It is insane and discriminatory for a school not to allow part timers to have TLRs.

[Ofthread]

In FE my college is using part-time working to squeeze us hard on salary. Majority of staff are PT & responsibilities e.g. out of hours, admin are not done on a pro-rata basis, we all have the same load as the FT staff. We also have less prep/marking time, as we don't get the pro-rata equivalent of the FT staff.

[Piggywaspushed]

Well.... quite....

Exasperated sigh emanates.