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?

[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.

[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.

[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?

[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.

[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?

[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.

[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.