Teacher training providers are urging schools to embrace serious flexible working options in order to attract more people into the profession.

It comes as the Department for Education (DfE) has launched a dedicated website offering resources and support to encourage flexible working in schools.

Seven “flexible working ambassador” MATs or schools have also been appointed to offer support and advice.

A survey from the National Association of School-Based Teacher Trainers (NASBTT) reveals that 89% of ITT providers believe more flexible working opportunities in schools would boost teacher recruitment.

Almost half of the providers said they were considering offering flexible working as part of their own training programmes, while a third said that potential applicants tell them that flexible working is important to them.

However, the providers reported that only half of the schools in their wider ITT partnerships currently offer flexible working for their staff.

The DfE says that flexible working can “help recruit and retain teachers, improve staff wellbeing and promote equality in the workforce”.

Its new flexible working ambassadors have been appointed “to support school leaders in implementing and embedding flexible working in their schools” (see DfE, 2023).

The ambassadors are charged with helping schools with, for example, designing flexible working policy, flexible hiring, and overcoming challenges such as timetabling and budgeting.

The new website, meanwhile, offers free training and support webinars, including case studies of different approaches such as job-sharing.

In the NASBTT survey, the most common example of flexible working offered by schools within ITT partnerships was allowing teachers to take PPA time at home.

However, Emma Hollis, executive director of NASBTT, wants to see a much deeper conversation about how far we can go with flexible working.

The main approaches to flexible working as identified by DfE-commissioned research (DfE, 2019) include a wide range of options:

  • Part-time: Working less than full-time hours and/or working fewer days.
  • Job-share: Two or more people doing one job and splitting the hours.
  • Split role: Tasks divided between two part-time job holders.
  • Split shifts: A working shift comprising two or more separate periods of duty in a day.
  • Staggered hours: The employee has different start, finish and break times from other staff.
  • Staggered weeks: Such as a formal agreement to work outside term-time to deliver booster classes/sports programmes/enrichment activities.
  • Compressed hours: Working full-time hours but over fewer days.
  • Home/remote working: Regularly/formally agreed as part of the working week (e.g. PPA/admin tasks, holding remote meetings).
  • Phased retirement: Gradually reduced working hours and/or responsibilities to transition from full-time to retirement.
  • Annualised hours: Working hours spread across the year, which may include some school closure days or where hours vary across the year to suit the school and employee.
  • Sabbatical: Employee takes a period of time away from work, over and above annual leave (usually the job is kept open for them to return).
  • Career break: Employee takes unpaid time off work. Contract is suspended or ended, without a guaranteed return, depending on policy and individual agreement.
  • Flexi/lieu time: The paid time off work an employee gets for having worked additional hours.
  • Family leave: Days of authorised leave during term time, for example to care for family members.

Commenting on the survey findings, Ms Hollis said: “What we have learned is not surprising – there is not much radical innovation currently evident in schools – offering PPA at home, for example, is a great start but that may not be enough to attract a wider pool of applicants.

“Although many schools and providers are exploring part-time options, this can be problematic in the long-term for underfunded schools already struggling with limited budgets as part-time staff are more expensive (as the total on-costs are higher).

“In a sector struggling to recruit enough teachers at present, more flexible approaches to working may help make the profession more attractive to potential teachers. It is time for a more holistic discussion on more flexible approaches.

“Work needs to be done to assess teacher attitudes on issues such as working from home and compressed hours,” she continued, calling for a wider conversation about how, when and where we teach children, the role of AI in facilitating change and more.

She said there was little point in ITT providers offering flexible options if schools do not also offer such flexibilities.

The conversation is crucial, Ms Hollis adds, in light of the current retention crisis in schools, with 39,930 teachers having quit the classroom for reasons other than retirement in the last academic year (2021/22). This represents 8.8% of the workforce and is the highest number since records began in 2010. There are also on-going recruitment challenges across secondary and primary education, with the government on track to recruit just 79% of the primary and 58% of the secondary teachers it needs in 2023/24.

Ms Hollis added: “For flexibilities to be truly attractive and workable, some radical rethinking and innovation is needed around the very purpose and structure of our education systems. From our perspective, we need to start with some ‘what if’? questions, however to be effective this must go way beyond ITT – we need a much broader conversation.”