PRIMARY teachers could be given one day a fortnight away from the classroom for marking and preparation under sweeping changes to the staffing of schools to be announced later this month.

Ministers are also expected to scrap the notorious clause in contracts that says teachers must work as long as is asked of them.

They are also considering proposals from heads to cap the number of hours secondary staff can cover for absent colleagues. But they are set to defy the wishes of Britain’s biggest teachers’ union by boosting the role of assistants in schools.

The moves are to be outlined by the Government as part of the 18-month workload inquiry. Ministers are promising to give teachers more time to teach by recruiting an army of support, administrative and IT staff. Support staff could, for example, take music or drama, freeing primary teachers to mark or prepare lessons.

A formal career structure is likely to be put forward for classroom assistants, who will be able to progress to qualified teacher status.

But the Government will risk a run-in with the National Union of Teachers by suggesting that experienced support staff take lessons, under the management of teachers. Unions remain to be convinced about this idea and have threatened industrial action if the projected role of assistants is not to their liking.

The proposals to relieve teachers will use part of the extra pound;15 billion that the Government has said it will spend on schools, colleges and universities before 2006.

The clause in teachers’ contracts saying staff should work 1,265 hours a year, plus any extra hours needed to “discharge effectively” their duties, is to be reworded. In future, employers will have to take account, when loading fresh duties on staff, of the impact on work-life balance.

The number of support staff in English and Welsh schools has almost trebled in the past decade to 156,000 and is set to go on rising.

Graham Lane, education spokesman for the Local Government Association, said the Government had asked his association to work on a detailed plan to give primary teachers 10 per cent non-contact time. It wanted to know how much such a move would cost and how many extra teachers would be required. He said: “I think we are going towards producing a contract and conditions of service for people working in schools, no longer just teachers, which I think will really help to raise standards and modernise the way schools operate.”

Eamonn O’Kane, general secretary of the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers, said: “We see the non-contact time as an essential component of any settlement.”

Unions are impatient for change. Doug McAvoy, NUT general secretary, said:

“The Government has a choice. Does it make reducing teachers’ workload its priority now, or does it simply keep these discussions going, 18 months after this review began?” Gerald Imison, deputy general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said: “We need to see real reductions in workload soon.”

Primary news, 7; Opinion, 20