Flexible working advice please! (teaching)

[GreenTofuBurger]

I am currently on maternity leave and am considering requesting part-time hours when I return.

I work at a private boarding school where there is a huge number of extracurricular activities and responsibilities (as in most schools!) These take up hours of time each week.

I know I will end up doing 100% of these as it isn’t really practical to do e.g. 80% of pastoral duties.

WIBU to request a 0.8 contract with full-time commitment to extra-curricular duties but a 0.7 teaching load? Or is that cheeky? I don’t mind about “trapped” hours as I plan to use them to get everything done at school and stop taking work home.

For context: a reduced teaching load would give me a much better work-life balance as I am only a few years in the profession so planning and marking still absorbs so much time. At 0.8 teaching plus full-time extracurriculars I think the difference would be negligible for less pay, but 0.7 teaching feels like a good balance. I have other children all primary age and want to be able to spend evenings and weekends with them without stressing about work.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

I think to ask for 0.8 and cut back on the extra curricular too would be more manageable. The 'I'll do the bits with no planning and marking' but less actual teaching is hard for the school management to quantify. It makes more sense to be 0.8 and get 0.8 of the salary.

It’s definitely not cheeky to ask for a reduction in teaching hours. If another teacher needs to be employed, they may ask you to reduce to 0.5. Would you be happy with that? Do you have a tutor group at the moment? I also work in a boarding school and find it’s the extras that take up huge amounts of time. Can you keep full teaching and ask to drop the extra stuff? Some of our staff don’t have tutor responsibilities and are on a reduced contract - works well with younger children as they it means they don’t have responsibilities in the early morning or evening.

Thanks for your thoughts! 0.5 wouldn’t work financially unfortunately.

I won’t be allowed to drop extracurriculars entirely; our policy says we need to continue doing at least some of each type (pastoral, sport, charity, academic surgeries, duties, etc.) But I could ask to reduce. I don’t mind them so much as although time-consuming there is no prep or pressure!! And I enjoy spending time with the pupils outside of lesson time. It’s the planning and marking load that I find the most burdensome, but I suppose reducing extras would give me more time to get that done. Before mat leave I was doing 70+ hour weeks, and we teach Saturdays too so Sunday would then be spent catching up on work.

Perhaps the best balance would be 0.75 then I could ask to miss every fourth week of sport etc. and still have a reasonable reduction in teaching hours.