“I turned down senior leadership, went part-time and have spent the last eight years trying to make up the lost ground. It was an either/or decision as a woman, while watching male colleagues who were less experienced/knowledgeable fly past me. It isn’t equal and it isn’t fair.”
This was just one response to Tes editor Ann Mroz’s editorial on flexible working, published on Friday.
In her piece, our editor urged schools to be compassionate and flexible employers, and highlighted the government’s teacher-retention statistics: “According to Department for Education stats, 27 per cent of those leaving teaching are women in their thirties - it’s a safe bet that this is because they decide it’s impossible to balance professional lives with family responsibility.”
This resonated with a huge number of teachers, who then shared their experiences of the barriers they have faced when becoming a parent while working in education.
