Every time parents’ evening rolls around, no one hears from Izzy’s mum and dad to book an appointment. Every sports day, Izzy’s mum and dad are absent. Every nativity and end-of-year show, Izzy’s mum and dad are not in the audience.

Izzy’s teacher tries to find out what’s going on. Taking her aside, the teacher asks: “Do your mummy and daddy work nights?”

Izzy laughs and says: “No. They’re teachers!”

Flexible working in schools

This story is apocryphal, but it neatly encapsulates how many teacher-parents miss their children’s milestone events. There’s always somewhere else they have to be. Mainly being there for other people’s children.

It’s not just teacher-parents, however, who struggle with the profession’s lack of flexibility. Spend time with any teacher and you’ll soon hear them lamenting the impossibility of organising an MOT, arranging a delivery, attending a friend’s birthday event and more.

We all recognise that this needs to change - in schools, in trusts, at a government level. System leaders often talk about the critical role more flexibility could play in teacher retention. Education secretary Bridget Phillipson has repeatedly said she wants to give teachers more flexibility.

And yet, have we ever really sat down to define what we mean by “flexibility”? Because it is not straightforward.

Do we mean the chance to take time off during term time? Are we talking about more part-time roles? Is this about homeworking and dodging the daily commute? There are multiple permutations. And this means that discussing flexible working isn’t easy as the term means so many things to different people.

The rise of flexible working

That flexibility as a concept is important to recruitment is undeniable. Increasingly, graduates are being drawn to careers offering four-day weeks and homeworking.

As Alice Gregson, CEO of Forum Strategy, explains: “Flexible working is fast becoming the most sought-after aspect of working life. A recent survey by People Management showed that 77 per cent of employees say flexible working is more important to them than a pay rise.”

She points to further research showing that “almost half of employees would reject a 15 per cent pay increase in favour of retaining flexible working arrangements”.

As a result, teaching, with its traditionally rigid days and hours of work, struggles to compete.

Teacher retention challenges

The same applies to retention. Women in their thirties are the largest demographic of teachers leaving the profession.

Emma Sheppard, founder of The Maternity Teacher Paternity Teacher Project, says a lack of flexibility for this cohort is a big driver of the exodus.

“Flexible working is a proven retention measure, particularly for those returning from a period of parental leave or with caring responsibilities,” she explains. “Where flexible working arrangements are agreed, retention follows.”

If teaching is going to attract new recruits and persuade existing teachers to stay, greater flexibility is essential. As Gregson puts it, “flexible working is no longer a nice-to-have: it’s a must-have”.

What does working flexibly look like?

But what flexibility do teachers actually want?

1. Enable PPA to be worked from home

Gráinne Hallahan, head of community at TeacherTapp, says the most popular flexible working option for teachers is being able to work on planning, preparation and assessment at home. Ideally, this would involve combining PPA into a day or half day, taken in a block.

2. Provide greater opportunities to job share

Compared with other job sectors, teaching has relatively few job shares, particularly in senior leadership roles. For example, a quick search of a teaching vacancy website shows 196 current headteacher vacancies in England. Of these, only nine specify that the role is “open to job share”. And of these nine, only three are adverts for secondary headship.

As Vivienne Porritt, co-founder of WomenEd, argues, addressing the paucity of job share roles “would alleviate the lack of leaders in schools, would ensure more women are retained and would reduce the very high gender pay gap in education”.

3. Develop more efficient start times

According to Hallahan, some teachers are keen to see a “structural reimagining” of the school day. For example, “if assemblies were moved to midday, some teachers could start later, reducing morning traffic stress and improving flexibility without disrupting core teaching time. The start of the day would depend on your first lesson, not assembly”.

4. Allow regular early finishes

TeacherTapp responses often highlight the emotional toll that rigid school schedules take on teachers with children. Unlike other professionals, Hallahan points out, “teachers struggle to adjust their hours for key family moments”.

‘Flexible working is no longer a nice-to-have: it’s a must-have’

Neglecting parenting duties, Hallahan notes, “can leave teacher-parents feeling inadequate, as if they’re missing out while their little one grows up. Allowing an early finish once a week for parents to do the school pick-up would alleviate some of these anxieties”.

5. Introduce a nine-day fortnight

As Dixons Academies Trust continues to pilot a nine-day fortnight for teachers across its 17 schools, other teachers are keen to see similar innovative working patterns. As Porritt argues, having an extra day off each fortnight could “help tackle teacher workload and boost recruitment and retention”.

Introducing policies like these would improve teachers’ work-life balance, attract new recruits and help prevent existing staff, especially female teachers, from departing in droves.

Barriers to flexibility

So, what’s stopping schools adopting new practices involving greater flexibility?

Speaking with experts on flexible working within teaching, a few recurring barriers to greater flexibility emerge.

1. The in-person nature of the role

Problem: Unlike many professions, teaching is a job that requires the employee to be present in a specific building, working face-to-face with the people they support. If there’s one thing that the pandemic taught us, it’s that remote teaching is deeply unpopular with staff, pupils and parents, and is not a viable flexible working solution for teachers.

Solution: While advances in technology may help to lighten teacher workloads, we have to accept that teachers still need to spend large chunks of their time in classrooms. But, as Gregson puts it, flexibility “is about so much more than where you physically base yourself for work”. Which brings us to the rest of our list…

2. Timetabling constraints

Problem: As Hallahan explains, teachers “acknowledge the practical challenges” of timetabling, with “high levels of part-time working already making scheduling difficult, particularly for key subjects and exam groups”. Accommodating a variety of flexible working patterns can seem overwhelming for leadership.

Solution: This is a two-pronged problem. Firstly, many schools are still running very basic timetabling processes that make scheduling flexible working impossible. If the government is serious about flexible working, it should consider resourcing software that can streamline timetabling and make flexible working far easier to plan.

The second issue is having enough teachers to fill the gaps. Schools should receive adequate funding, enabling them to plug the timetable gaps with highly qualified cover staff. Beyond that, trade-offs are inevitable. In exchange for a nine-day fortnight, for example, are teachers willing to accept more cover across the week? Or occasionally teach a class of 60 in the hall?

3. Covering PPA

Problem: Similarly, I’ve written previously about issues with working PPA from home, whereby teachers worry that the quality of learning suffers when unqualified colleagues cover their PPA. While consolidated chunks of PPA are attractive to many teachers, the work-life balance gains are often offset by concerns about the detrimental impact on pupil progress.

Solution: Leaders need to have honest conversations with teachers about the full implications of flexibility around PPA. This will enable them to make informed decisions about what’s best for them and their pupils.

And what if PPA from home is a non-starter in some schools? It’s time to ask leaders for alternative flexible options. As Gregson puts it, “we need to move towards a mindset of what we can offer, not what we can’t”.

4. An unwillingness to change and negative perceptions

Problem: Gregson highlights what she calls a “cultural resistance”, whereby some leaders “perceive flexible working as impractical or unfair” and refuse to consider innovations as a result.

Porritt concurs, arguing that “a significant barrier is the view that flexible working is a problem rather than a benefit”.

Similarly, where the organisational culture rewards full-time colleagues for being present in the building for the longest hours, other staff will avoid asking for flexible arrangements. Gregson describes this as “the fear that they will be seen as being less committed or not working as hard”.

Solution: According to Sheppard, the key is demythologising flexible working through education. Schools need to consider how to apply flexible working to their unique contexts. She recommends that schools have “a dedicated member of staff responsible for leading and maintaining this change”.

Crucially, they need to be “given time and recognition for completing training and designing a plan to bring about whole-school transformation”.

Another good way to tackle this issue is to shine a light on approaches that are being adopted successfully elsewhere. Examples of excellent practice across schools and trusts need to be shared widely.

Flexible working case studies and advice can be found in WomenEd’s latest book, Disruptive Women. Similarly, the Department for Education has compiled a collection of resources and webinars that provide expert advice for schools.

Formal vs ad-hoc flexibility

What would really work is a plan that every school can follow for flexible working, you might argue.

I’d love to be able to provide a neat conclusion to the issue of flexible working in teaching. A set of clear recommendations for all schools to follow. A one-size-fits-all answer to the recruitment and retention conundrum. But as we’ve seen, that’s not possible.

‘We need to move towards a mindset of what we can offer, not what we can’t’

For some schools, the nine-day model is going to be both attractive and achievable. For others, allowing PPA to be taken from home will be a more realistic aim. For certain schools, however, neither of these structural changes is going to work, no matter how much leaders try.

And that’s probably fine. Because flexibility is about more than sweeping overhauls of the timetable or school day. True flexibility often involves smaller - but in some ways more radical - shifts to a school’s culture.

Indeed, according to the recent Missing Mothers report, conducted by the New Britain Project and The Maternity Teacher Paternity Teacher Project, it’s the ad-hoc flexibility required to manage working and family life that is valued even above formal part-time arrangements.

Just-in-time solution

So, what might this ad-hoc flexibility look like in practice?

Imagine a school where teachers who are menopausal, menstruating or not feeling well can send a quick email to a designated colleague who will sit in with their class while they take time out.

Imagine a school where teachers are allowed to nip out of the classroom to answer the phone if their GP surgery does callbacks only after 8.45am.

Imagine a school that has an informal, reciprocal cover arrangement in the lead-up to Christmas, so all teachers can go to their child’s nativity or do a bit of shopping.

Imagine a school where CPD twilights can sometimes be conducted at home, using high-quality online modules rather than in-person delivery.

Imagine a school where you always start an hour later the day after open evenings or other late-night events.

Some schools already do some of these things, or things like these. These relatively small things add up. They make teachers feel valued and trusted. They make teachers’ lives that little bit easier.

Ultimately, if we want to attract more teachers and also keep the ones we’ve got, we need to think of flexibility as a mindset. And this mindset involves a fundamental reimagining of working conditions, even if that just means paying attention to the little gestures that matter.

Mark Roberts is director of research and an English teacher at Carrickfergus Grammar School in Northern Ireland and author of books including The Behaviour Whisperer