My school has already declined my request for working flexibly

[Nikster77]

Hello there mummies. I am hoping that some of you may be able to help me. I am a teacher and am due to return to school after a year's maternity leave which will end in April of next year. Being the good employee, I thought I would approach my school early about working flexible hours. I asked to go four days a week and to my total surprise, my school have declined it under the grounds of it being detrimental to the quality of teaching.

I am definitely going to appeal it and set out some suggestions as to how the school can allocate my work load out on that one day. I just feel very angry and also disheartened that my school seem to be so narrow minded about balancing parenthood with teaching. The thought of having to go back five days, working those long hours and hardly seeing my beautiful daughter is heartwrenching. I am even thinking about other possibilities that I might have should they not change their decsion.

Has anyone been through something similiar? Not sure whether to go to the union with it?

Thanks,

Your first point of call is to appeal - I guess you could ask union advice - but it is not a grievance issue as they have the right to decline due to business reasons.

Don't forget - the right to request does not = the right to be granted!

Yes do go to the Union. They will probably have someone who knows quite a bit about flexible working requests and it's what you pay your subs for... but most importantly it won't hurt.

Have they said in what way they are concerned the quality of teaching will be affected? The link below explains the business reasons that must be given. It looks like they are arguing number three. Do you teach primary or secondary children? I suppose (and I'm no expert in education or schools or anything like that at all) if you have a primary school class and someone else teaches them for one day a week that might have a quality issue because it will be tough to build a relationship with a teacher for just one day per week, but secondary school is not such an issue as they have multiple teachers any way?? Regardless you need to know what their concern actually is so that you have the best chance of your appeal being successful.

Do appeal and I would suggest asking prior to the appeal hearing what changes they would be more likely to agree. It may be that they'd accept 2/3 days a week job share or similar. Have you spoken to your line manager prior to submitting your request?

I know it's really tough but try to think of this as a business decision rather than personal. Your motivation for the request (to spend more time with your dd) is really important to you, but your colleagues and your boss won't have that emotional pull. It'll be all about work for them. Know that and use it to your advantage.

www.businesslink.gov.uk/bdotg/action/detail?itemId=1097377943&r.i=1081563910&r.l1=1073858787&r.l2=1073858914&r.l3=1074428798&r.l4=1073931239&r.s=sc&r.t=RESOURCES&type=RESOURCES

You nearly lost me at mummies (is my pet hate - only DS can call me mummy) but I read on!

Standard practice in my authority I'm afraid.

We have several job shares at school... Surely your class have a different teacher for PPA for half a day anyway. Can you find a few more local schools who use job shares who could support how effective they can be? Good luck with the appeal xx

surely there are other part time teachers or job shares in your school. I think it is down to the attitude of the head unfortunately. I was once turned down when I worked for very old fashioned head. I started to look for another part time job went to an interview and he strangely changed his mind. It might be worth putting out feelers to see if there is anyone suitable who might want to work your day off. I am assuming you work in a primary as it is hard to see justification for refusal in secondary at all. Could you ask them to look into finding someone and then discuss again if no one suitable applies? Are there any other preganant members of staff who might in the future be looking for a similar arrangement. If alll else fails you might have to go back and bide your time, look for another part time post or try again in a few months.

"surely there are other part time teachers or job shares in your school"

That's irrelevant I'm afraid. Each fwr is considered on it's own merits. No precedent can be argued.

The problem is teaching is a 5 day a week job simply as kids are in 5 days a week. I have the same in mine although Im not a teacher, it is arguably a 5 day-er. (I was eventually lucky but it was a fight) That does not mean though that alternatives cannot be found if the employer wishes to. And this is unfortunately the key! Do they want to?

I would be curious as to how much thought went into your actual decline, or if it was just reflex action? If job shares exist or might be possible in your subject then its very much worth exploring these. I wasn't sure that a place can reject outright, my experience lead me to suggest that the process is to have a meeting to discuss it first where problem issues were highlighted so you can propose alternatives. (and then its rejected....or not if you give enough ground) Did they follow the process correctly? Precedent can be argued but comparing situations can be nearly impossible. There are very specific grounds for declining a request. Its quite hard for a firm/work place to do so, but not impossible. It is however possible that by an immediate decline they hope to put you off. Appeal is your next step. Take proper advice though.

Good luck x

I was lucky as another teacher had a baby at a similar time to me. We went to our Head together with a well thought out plan of doing a job share and how it would work. He agreed as he could see it would work well and didn't want to lose either of us.

Could the issue be an April return, the class will have a change of teacher mid year so having a job share adds to the instability for the kids. Can you suggest 5 days a week for the summer term and a job share from September ( which they would have plenty of time to advertise for?

I am a governor and we had a staff panel to consider a similar request. It was refused on the grounds it was too disruptive to the class for just one day. This was a reception class and tbh the application eas very poorly written with no regard to the impact on the children, planning etc. However the member of staff rethought it and reapplied for a 3 day week. This was easier to accomodate as we could work around the planning a hand over and ppa share on Wednesday's .
It's also easier to get someone decent to cover the missing days when you offer a better contract with more days. From your point of view you won't want to be carrying someone else in terms of planning etc if the school can't cover the rest of your contract.
I think a full job share or a 3 day 2 day arrangement may be received more favourably.

As a parent, IME, jobshare teachers either split the week 2.5 days each or 2 days and 3 days. My eldest is currently in a jobshare class, 2.5 days for each teacher. It works well, but I think that 4 days of one teacher and just one of another teacher would not work as well. The one day teacher not getting enough time to really be "part" of that class with such an uneven split. It would just be like the main teacher being away, rather than both teachers having the role of teacher. Jobshare teaching works really well for my DS, but I know the teachers have been doing this job together for a decade and they are always in contact with eachother.

Bad luck :(

No consolation I know, but I am a teacher and exactly the same thing happened to me. I had a primary SLT post so things were even more complicated.

In the end, I got a PT job outside teaching and am hoping never to go back to the classroom. It is such a pity when schools are so inflexible and lose teachers who have years of experience. I think back to the initial teacher training I had, my experience and skills within the classroom, all the days of supply cover I had to attend courses...what a waste.

If you are definitely hoping to go back four days per week, I think that your best chance of succeeding is to commit to doing the planning for Literacy and Numeracy for the fifth day too. No, I know that you shouldn't have to, but that way you can assure the HT that continuity will be maintained. Then, in the afternoon, timetable in something that the covering teacher can plan for independently eg. PE Another thing that might help is if your teaching 'week' begins mid-week, so that any assessment or big pieces of work are not happening on a Friday. I know it works slightly differently anyway with the revised frameworks and longer units, but if you can get your head around working that way it could be helpful. Unfortunately you will probably have to accept that you will be doing all the work that goes with being a FT teacher for 80% of the pay, especially given that your HT does not seem to be that supportive.

I strongly suggest that you contact your union ASAP as that tends to focus the mind of HTs. :)

However, a word of warning, be careful before assuming that you will just find a PT job elsewhere. I assumed that and found it much more difficult than I had anticipated. Lots and lots of competition for PT teaching posts.

Best wishes.