Best Practice

To stop or not to stop? A case study of flexible teaching timetables

If a teacher’s lesson is going well, why can’t they keep going? Or if pupils are not responding, why can’t they stop? At Kensington Primary School they can. Ben Levinson explains their flexible timetable
Image: Adobe Stock

At Kensington Primary School, we have a long history of disrupting practices where we see a logical reason for change.

We are also deeply committed to trusting our team. We have pushed back against a system that, at times, can actively create barriers and mistrust and reduce agency for skilled professionals.

I wrote recently in Headteacher Update about some of our approaches to reducing workload for our teachers (Levinson, 2024). In that article, I referenced one of the changes that has been core to this work – namely, the introduction, four years ago, of flexible timetables. So allow me here to expand on how this approach works.

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