Teacher recruitment and retention have been associated with the word ‘crisis’ since I joined the profession thirty years ago. But Daniel Kebede’s idea to give teachers a day each week to work and ‘mark from home’ is not the answer.
Kebede is the general secretary of the National Education Union. His job is to speak up for his members – many of whom, like me, work very long hours. According to the Department for Education, full-time teachers put in an average of 52.4 hours per week during term time. The work might be rewarding but it is also gruelling and often challenging. Yes, the holidays and the pension are nice but, less than three weeks into term, I am sinking under the sheer volume of work that needs to be done by the end of the week, never mind half term.
If Kebede had his way, every teacher would also become part-time from a timetabling perspective
I liken the job to chairing four or five hour-long meetings every day of the week, for which I prepare all the papers and co-ordinate all the action points that ensue. By the time multiple back-to-back meetings give way to a so-called free period, only a tiny fraction of the now backlogged work can be cleared. Early mornings – I’m usually in school by 6.30 am – and late nights become routine, while longer-term tasks tend to be put off until the next school holiday, much of which is therefore not holiday from work.
Kebede suggests that a day working from home might help. He not only misses the point – the problem is the sheer volume of work, not where it is done – but he appears oblivious to the impact on school communities. When children are in school, they need their teachers to be in school. From the pupils’ perspective, every teacher would become part-time.
Make no mistake, part-time teachers are crucial to the staffing of most schools. I’m part-time myself. But I am also conscious of the effect we have on school timetables, especially at a secondary level. I compile my school’s timetable alongside my duties as a science teacher. Timetables are complex problems in four dimensions – classes, teachers, rooms and time – with no perfect solution. As the number of part-time teachers rises, unavailability increases and the compromises on curriculum delivery become ever more severe.
If Kebede had his way, every teacher would also become part-time from a timetabling perspective. The likely result? Too many lessons delivered not by the most appropriate teacher but by whoever happened to be available in school on the day. That’s not good for children and not good for teachers.
Besides, we are teachers, and we work with children. We can hardly do that when we are sat at home ploughing through paperwork. Planning, preparation and assessment (PPA) time does need to be protected, and I agree with Kebede that 20 per cent is more appropriate than the current minimum of 10 per cent. But consolidating all that time into a single day is surely a recipe for disaster. The other four days in school would be jammed solid: no time to think, no time to plan and no time to reflect. That’s not what teachers want.
In twenty years of writing timetables, colleagues have often asked me to try and spread their non-contact time throughout the week. I cannot recall ever being asked to clump it all together on a single day. Kebede would be wise to listen to his members – including those who write timetables – before lecturing us about them. He went on to ask, ‘does a physics teacher need to be in at 8 a.m. in the morning? Timetabling can allow for staggered starts’.
Timetabling can do virtually anything, but it can never do everything. It all comes down to priorities. If a physics lesson needs to be taught first thing in the morning by a subject specialist, then that physics teacher might well need to be in early to get ready. But to be fair on Kebede, I think his gripe is with those schools that micromanage their staff and require all teachers to be in school continuously throughout the school day, whether they have a class or not.
The Department for Education reports that almost one in three teachers last no more than five years in the profession, and around half have moved on after only fourteen. After thirty years, I’m beginning to identify with Methuselah. But I’m still here because my employer does not direct my every move and every detail of every lesson. If I need to leave the school site then, assuming I am not teaching, I know I can go without seeking permission.
Treat us as professionals, and I suspect that we are more likely to stick it out. That includes leaving us to decide how we do our work – I suspect that Kebede and I are in full agreement on that point – but on the where question, full-time teachers must expect to be in school every school day. Our pupils need us.
The Covid-19 pandemic taught us that remote working was a very poor replacement for real-life interactions between teachers and pupils in schools. With these new proposals, it seems that it is a lesson that Kebede’s National Education Union still needs to learn.
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