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?

[wheresmyliveship]

My HoD and two other TLR holders are part time. One part timer was p1 until lunch every day. One HoD last year was 4 days in 3. SENCo part time. 2 assistant headteachers part time. Each part timer asked around April every year if they want to go full time in sept and no bother if not. Didn’t realise how good we had it...

[DrMadelineMaxwell]

Its built into the terms and conditions that 'Part time teachers must, according to the STPCD, be paid on a pro rata basis to the total FTE pay rate - including any TLR1 or TLR2 payments - for the post occupied.'

[DrMadelineMaxwell]

I was the first person to ever go part time in my primary school, back in 2002. Since then 10 other members of staff have gone part time at various times. We have 6 currently.
It's a fact that our HT dislikes pt roles due to various reasons and on their first day in their role, their first conversation with me was to ask if I would go full time again.

[cdtaylornats]

Going part-time in any profession damages your career.

[Piggywaspushed]

Helpful input cd. Thanks.

Teaching is a profession with a large number of women and a large number of part time teachers so it is an issue teachers will want to discuss. And it is also a valid topic for women to discuss.

There is absolutely no valid reason at all why part time work makes you a less capable, valuable or worthy employee in teaching.

Many GPs work part time and have progressed to partnerships. My understanding is that is has become the norm.

[Piggywaspushed]

The spirit of the Burgundy Book , I think, was to protect teachers from not being given TLRs if they were pt. However, it has backfired to the pro rating of TLRs which is patently not fair of the same outcomes are expected.

[fedup21]

Teaching is a profession with a large number of women and a large number of part time teachers so it is an issue teachers will want to discuss. And it is also a valid topic for women to discuss.

One that is particularly relevant for teachers to discuss on a discussion forum board for teachers!

[Piggywaspushed]

Well.... quite....

Exasperated sigh emanates.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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]

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

[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.

[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.

[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...

[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.

[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)

[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.

[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]

Why not MFL?

[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.

[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.