As teachers, we choose to dedicate our lives to the advancement of the next generation. We nurture, train, encourage - often to the detriment of our own lives, families and health. But there could be a simple yet radical way to resolve this dilemma.

The cure? All teaching jobs should be offered on a flexible basis. You apply, attend an interview and, if you’re the best candidate (or one of them), your preferred working patterns are then discussed. You and the leadership team work together to come to an acceptable compromise that will benefit you, the school and, ultimately, the students.

The idea of a four-day working week was ridiculed recently when suggested in the Labour Party’s election manifesto, yet the concept of working fewer hours is not new. In the 1930s, economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that, by now, we’d be working a 15-hour week. Mostly, he got it wrong, yet there are some people working shorter hours and making a decent living.

More recently, Timothy Ferriss’ book The 4-Hour Workweek had me quite excited - until I realised that, in my public sector role, no amount of informing colleagues I would check my emails only twice a day, at 8am and 4pm, nor any attempt to outsource work (my marking, perhaps?) would be a golden ticket to balance and harmony.

Radical isn’t necessarily ludicrous, though. There was a time, for instance, when it was accepted that women took the default role as homemakers. But, as a society, we broke new boundaries in scrapping that narrative.

As Jonathan Taylor pointed out in an article for Tes last month, titled “Why teachers should all work a four-day week”, we have made profound changes in all sorts of other areas - for example, with homosexuality laws - but it remains true that “entrenched attitudes have thwarted and delayed inevitable change” in when and how we work.

Despite teaching being viewed as one of the most family-friendly professions, teachers often have a battle on their hands if they want to work flexibly. From an outsider’s perspective, you can see why. Children are in school from 8.30am to 4pm and need constant supervision; that much is true. Or is it?

When I worked in European schools, students did not have a cover teacher if someone was absent. Rather, they had reading time, private study or “free” time. Why, then, are we wedded to the notion that all teaching staff must be in the building at any one time?

Registration classes, for example, are becoming obsolete, with attendance being recorded in each class, removing the need for all teachers to be on site at the first bell and making staggered start times possible. Or what about using “cover supervisors”, as in England, to carry out supervision duties around schools or to be in place when a qualified teacher isn’t required? Cover lessons rarely need an individual qualified to postgraduate level to carry them out on a short-term basis.

I’ve been surprised by how the part-time teacher is viewed as a second-class citizen in schools - and spotting a teacher who has been granted flexible working is like catching a glimpse of the Loch Ness monster.

Funnily enough - and I take this as a compliment - colleagues frequently forget that I work only four days a week. I’m sometimes questioned about work that I haven’t completed (on the day I don’t work) or a register I didn’t mark (when I’ve been at my daughter’s swimming lesson).

The students are the ones who seem the least confused: some have split classes and there are never any complaints.

Change across the board

So, with a national teacher crisis on our hands, it’s odd that we aren’t looking at the problem from another angle. If it were standard to discuss what working hours teachers wanted, perhaps we could recruit the most talented graduates.

It might seem like a trendy concept to compress hours - and millennials have acquired a bad reputation for being lazy. But is it more a case of Generation X-ers and Baby Boomers just being a bit jealous of this refreshingly new mindset? Scrapping the idea of holding out for retirement to do everything you want to do and living while you have the energy to enjoy it seem fairly sensible to me.

Flexibility can help not just with recruitment but with retention, too. In a 2018 research report, “Factors affecting teacher retention”, for the Department for Education (DfE) in England, key reasons for leaving the profession included stress, ill health and the volume of marking and planning, as well as other workload issues. These problems impact on family life and could be reduced by flexible working.

To retain the best teachers, school business managers and leaders need to be given the power to plan timetables creatively, and work together to reject nonsensical ideas, such as the notion that job shares create confusion or inconsistency for students.

It’s radical, but not unheard of: some schools are already making it work. Kings’ School Winchester offers flexible working in a bid to retain the best-quality teachers, with 38 out of 100 staff working part-time. Even some in promoted roles are afforded part-time options. The key difference between this school and others with part-time teachers in promoted posts seems to be the pride it takes in this decision.

Teachers allowed part-time hours shouldn’t feel as if they are being granted a favour or special treatment, that their bosses’ hands have been tied by equality practices and that they are a nuisance. Speaking to part-time staff, they are often under pressure either to revert to full-time hours when their children are older or to complete the same amount of work, in less time, while being paid less.

Advertising jobs as only full-time when, with a little thought, they could be shared or compressed isn’t progressive or conducive to finding the best candidates for each role. Last year, the DfE published a literature review, “Exploring flexible working practice in schools”, which suggests that flexible working could attract and retain “a range of skilled and experienced individuals from across different generations”, but that “policies/processes themselves need to be flexible”.

It’s going to require strong government-level input, then. Considering Scotland’s upcoming implementation of a policy of 30 hours’ free childcare for working parents, this could be a timely next step in making it easier for parents to return to their careers.

Just because something hasn’t been tried before doesn’t mean it’s impossible. Who would have thought, 20 years ago, that we could communicate with classes through virtual work spaces?

An increasing number of businesses offer flexible working patterns to employees, but the common misconception is that part-time teachers are not as committed to the children. The DfE’s 2017 guidance “Flexible working in schools” addresses this and highlights that “the vast majority of teachers who work flexibly are deeply committed to their pupils” and, in some cases, the “appropriate and effective deployment of flexible working can actually lead to more effective performance and outcomes”.

There is an unsettling notion in teaching that time on-site signals dedication: value is persistently placed on visibility rather than high-quality teaching and learning. I’d rather my child’s teacher played chess online for an hour with someone in New York in their non-contact time if it made them happier and more productive.

It’s actually nothing new to suggest that happy staff are more productive, and much research exists in the corporate world to prove this. Both the Institute of Leadership and Management, and CIPD (the body for HR professionals) have carried out studies showing that employers believe allowing employees to work flexibly improves performance and motivation. Microsoft recently trialled a four-day working week in Japan and saw a dramatic increase in both.

All it takes is trust. It stands to reason that, if teachers felt as valued as staff in big corporations, they would go above and beyond. For example, I’ve carried out a learning conversation at a CPD event on my day off and I’ve volunteered to attend a school improvement afternoon off-site.

It’s not that I’ve fallen into the trap of working five days and being paid for only four, though; I’m genuinely happy to do the odd thing here and there. And just because I’m part-time, that doesn’t mean I don’t want to be fully involved. I’m usually quite militant about not working on my day off, to avoid this very issue. I give more freely when I feel as though it’s on my terms.

But are there differences in service-led industries, such as teaching, that would create insurmountable barriers? It’s interesting to look at nursing (as a relatively similar profession in many ways). The NHS staff engagement toolkit states that happier employees make patients happier and can even save lives. It explains that “where staff engagement scores are high, scores are also significantly higher for patient satisfaction and lower for standardised hospital mortality rates”.

So, why haven’t we seen the link between happy teachers, student experience and outcomes tied together more closely before now? It seems so obvious when you think about it.

Teaching is stressful and has a higher than average number of working days lost to stress, depression and anxiety compared with other professions. Yet accommodating alternative working patterns as a solution does not seem to be given proper consideration.

Admittedly, there are attempts to tackle poor health and wellbeing but they all seem rather feeble and temporary: a one-off yoga session as part of CPD lacks integrity, especially because the idea that a teacher could use a non-contact period to go for a run or do a food shop seems outrageous.

The incredulous attitude that a professional could manage their own day and quite easily undertake administrative tasks at another time, in another place, that would increase their productivity and impact positively on their wellbeing, highlights at best an oversight and at worst a staggering mistrust of teachers.

The power of choice

What about taking it a step further, then, and letting teachers literally choose their own hours? In Scotland, the McCrone report and strong trade union representation mean we are ahead of the game on this compared with England. In our non-contact time, we can work where we choose.

Surely it’s only a small step further to timetable teachers’ non-contact hours together - for example, when they need to collect their own children from school - or allow them to work a partial timetable, with every afternoon off.

Communication and understanding would be the keys to success; not everybody would want flexible hours. Lots of staff might prefer Monday mornings off timetable. Then again, many might prefer their non-contact time to punctuate their days instead. Some staff might be desperate to work only afternoons, with some equally keen to work only mornings. You don’t know until you ask. Therein lies the beauty and simplicity of it.

Before I became a parent, the idea of part-time or flexible working never occurred to me. It was a generational thing - I wasn’t brought up to think that way. Now that my child gets ever closer to school age, I can’t imagine ever wanting or being happy to work full-time again.

Maybe it’s because I have had friends taken from life too early, who missed out on so much; maybe it’s because I’m lazy (as, inevitably, some people will think); or maybe it’s because having three days off a week feels like a much better work-life balance. Now, I can pursue passions like writing and watching my wife compete in triathlons - and go back to work just a little less frazzled each Monday.

Sam Tassiker is a secondary teacher in Scotland

This article originally appeared in the 31 January 2020 issue under the headline “Flexible workers make every second count”