Flexible working: what are schools and trusts offering?

This article was originally published on 7 June 2024

The Covid-19 pandemic saw a dramatic rise in flexible working habits for workers across the globe, with hybrid or full working from home now the norm in many industries.

However, with teachers required in the classroom for most of the day, adopting flexible working is not as straightforward in education - but it is clear that settings are making it work where possible.

For example, data from the National Foundation For Educational Research (NFER) earlier this year showed that late starts and early finishes for teachers and ad-hoc personal days off doubled from 2021-22 to 2022-23, while off-site planning, preparation and assessment (PPA) time also increased.

Underlining this shift, the Department for Education published flexible working guidance in June 2023 while both the NEU and the NASUWT teaching unions have given their support to flexible working, with the NEU saying it is “beneficial for workers and employers, but also for pupils, quality of care and education”.

So, how are schools and multi-academy trusts (MATs) making it work? We look at various initiatives covered before on Tes to show how the sector is innovating to make flexible working a reality.

First steps towards flexible working

One of the most notable examples of a move to offer flexibility to staff can be found at Dixons Academies Trust.

Formed of 17 schools in Bradford, Leeds, Liverpool and Manchester, the trust announced earlier this year that it would be introducing a nine-day fortnight in a bid to increase recruitment and retention.

Teachers will get one day off every two weeks to do what they like and not have to be in school. Dixons CEO Luke Sparkes says he wants this to be a “genuine reduction in working hours”, not simply compressing “10 days of teaching into nine”.

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Sparkes says this will be done by using “creative and dynamic scheduling, and different approaches to pupil grouping, alongside increased PPA time” and that the trust is confident it can be done “without impacting pupils’ contact time”.

The trust also plans to allow PPA to be done remotely as another way to boost flexibility.

A similar offer is found at Bourne End Academy in Buckinghamshire where headteacher Louise Cowley offers her staff one afternoon of flexible working every six weeks.

This is done by scheduling PPA for a period five lesson, which means it can be done offsite as suits them best or used for other needs. PPA “can be during that afternoon, or at another time that suits them”, says Cowley.

Duvet days and term-time holidays

Another trust that has introduced a form of flexible working is Liberty Academy Trust, a specialist trust for autistic children and young people, with three schools in Reading, Stoke-on-Trent and London.

Specifically, it has introduced what it calls “duvet days” whereby staff can have a term-time day off with no expectation of working it back - as long as a half-term’s notice is given of when the day will be taken.

The initiative started around 18 months ago and, according to CEO Dr Nic Crossley, feedback has been “really positive”.

The trust also allows PPA to be done from home and is exploring the allowance of flexible start or finish times. “Principals are free to embrace other flexible opportunities, providing this can be managed without causing additional work for another colleague,” adds Dr Crossley.

Meanwhile, term-time holidays are also in place at Reach Academy Trust in south-west London; CEO Rebecca Cramer allows her staff to take up to three days off in a row during term-time.

These aren’t given for free, though, with staff expected to work back the time off at different points in the year such as by “attending school trips or conferences or working outside of directed time”.

Cramer says this policy was introduced as “we didn’t want our staff to be forced to make choices and miss out on important life events”.

Part-time working patterns

Another way flexible working is being made possible is the opportunity for more jobs to operate on a part-time basis.

For example, at Humber-based trust The Education Alliance, run by CEO Jonny Uttley, all jobs are advertised as “up to full time” in order to ensure there is scope for everyone to apply depending on their situation.

“[We] need to be flexible to retain our teaching staff and not lose them to non-teaching jobs, or other schools that will offer flexibility,” he says, adding that advertising jobs in this way makes it clear the trust is open to flexible working patterns.

“By doing this, we then introduce a natural conversation about work patterns, so the onus isn’t on the candidate to have to raise it themselves,” he adds.

As an example of how this works in practice, one school within the trust has a headteacher who works four days a week and, on the fifth, the “highly experienced” deputy steps up for the day.

He added that they are supported by an executive principal working across the trust and their salary has been increased to “reflect the increase in responsibility”.

Remote working arrangments

Embracing part-time working is something the London Academy of Excellence Tottenham has done, too. Headteacher Jan Balon says over half of its staff now work in this way - helped by a culture that means this way of working is “actively encouraged at all levels of the organisation”.

Balon says this does require some adjustments, such as providing remote meeting options so everyone can attend wherever they are, or watch it later if they miss it, and amending any deadlines to take into account part-time workers’ days.

“If we give seven working days to input data, part-time workers have their deadline adjusted to match their full-time counterparts,” he explains.

Balon adds that for this way of working to become standard, it is important senior staff do this, too - not least because it helped ensure “the needs of part-time staff are considered at every step of policy implementation”.

A similar approach to part-time working is found at Elsley Primary in London where around 32 per cent of teachers have “historically or currently worked part-time”, according to research by the Chartered College of Teaching in 2021.

“Part-time working helps us to retain staff and maintain stability, encourages diversity and allows the collective knowledge and expertise of the staff to continue to grow. There is also more goodwill and commitment from staff to the school,” the school explained.

Sharing the load

Meanwhile, job shares are also another way staff can reduce their overall hours - something Alison Fitch and Rebecca Stacey use in their role as co-heads of Boxgrove Primary School in Surrey.

The two have been in their roles since 2015 and in 2019 shared their experiences of job sharing with Tes, explaining that they believe a job share means they can bring more energy to the role and have “time to think, time to reflect and consider” - as well as manage childcare and spread the workload between the two of them - something they say has boosted their health and work-life balance.

“Many heads suffer from poor health working at full tilt...but with our approach, we are fortunate to have never been at that point,” they said.

Of course, job sharing comes with its challenges and they admit it is important to ensure you are working alongside someone who you are “totally aligned with, someone with whom you can create a shared vision”.

Meanwhile, Louise Birch, director of operations and company secretary at the University of Chichester Academy Trust, says MATs in particular should also embrace the flexibility that their breadth of schools can offer staff in terms of career progression to help retain and promote talented teachers.

Specifically, the trust has developed a career pathways programme so staff can work in other schools and experience different roles. “We’ve recently supported a senior leader to gain wider experience by working in different schools and they have now secured a permanent role in one of our schools,” she adds.

Leadership buy-in

There are many approaches that schools and trusts can use to allow more flexible working - from the obvious to the more novel.

For those still to move in this direction, though, there are plenty of guides designed to help schools - most notably a toolkit launched last year by the DfE that contains a raft of documents on everything from template flexible working policies to helping overcome cultural resistance to flexible working.

This latter point is no small issue, with Warren Carratt, CEO of Nexus Multi-Academy Trust, a DfE flexible working ambassador MAT, saying this is often the biggest barrier to uptake.

“In our experience, the biggest barrier to flexible working is often the attitude of headteachers, who sometimes are unable to visualise flexible working models in a broader strategic context or feel hamstrung by the risk of inequality,” he wrote in Tes last year.

“Previously requests for flexible working have been refused due to a perception that it causes disruption to learning.”

He says, though, that given the fact flexible working can reduce staff turnover, it is something that schools should embrace and shift their mindsets on.

“Flexible working models must then be reframed as a ‘planned change’ that efficiently delivers equitable outcomes and reduces the need for reactive changes,” he added.

Change in mindset

It’s a mindset shift that Commons Education Select Committee member Anna Firth MP has also called for: “Headteachers will need support to embrace the change towards flexible working...but the dividends will be worth it if it means more experienced staff stay in the workforce and more are attracted to join in the first place.”

These views are underpinned by wider research in this area, with a report from the NFER last year noting that leadership buy-in was crucial to the success, or not, of flexible working initiatives.

That buy-in also needs to extend to being confident explaining to parents why teachers may be working flexible hours or days, even though a different requirement is set for pupils, as outlined on Tes by the chief people officer at Bishop Chadwick Catholic Education Trust, Claire Druery.

“Recruitment in education will become increasingly difficult if we are not willing to advocate for the difference between an adult employee and a pupil,” she wrote.

Clearly, then, if education is to embrace flexible working and ensure more teachers can enjoy similar benefits to other sectors, it seems incumbent on those at the top across all settings to usher in new ways of working to suit staff at all career and life stages.

For those yet to make this move, there is no shortage of initiatives, ideas and inspiration from those across the sector showing what can be achieved - and that teaching does not have to remain a 9-5, five-day-a-week profession.

George Phillips is a freelance journalist