Flexible working in schools #4
This document has been developed to support school leaders, Human Resources Directors and Human Resources Business Partners to develop a more proactive and structured approach to flexible working at a whole-school level. It provides answers to key questions that will inform and guide in the following areas:
Many schools, at both primary and secondary level, have some part-time teaching staff and job shares, as well as a number of staff with informal flexible working arrangements. Feedback from schools suggests that these tend to come about by accommodating individual requests.
This reactive approach then tends to be reflected in a perception amongst staff that there is limited scope for flexible working, that some reasons for requesting a flexible work pattern have greater validity than others, and that a school will never be able to meet all staff preferences if it opens up to requests more widely.
In response to Covid-19, people in all sectors, including education, have been required to work flexibly. For many, this meant working from home for a period of time, and working at different times of the day (and the week). For some, most notably for working parents, it also involved compressing the working week to fit around other caring commitments.
Throughout the pandemic, people have found new ways of working and have seen opportunities for flexible working which previously didn’t seem possible. The demand for flexible working may increase as a result of this, as will the scope of what is achievable.
Staff in schools will be looking beyond the pandemic, thinking about what is possible and what could work in future. School leaders, too, will be thinking about what has been learnt and what could be taken forward.
Flexible working can be considered as mainstream in the UK: 26% of all employees are part-time nationally, with 41% of female employees working part-time (pre-Covid data). This is in contrast to schools where, in a female-dominated workforce, only 27% of primary and 20% of secondary teachers worked part-time in 2019.
A lack of flexible working can be an important factor contributing to some teachers leaving the profession (Worth et al., 2018)[1]. Moreover, flexible working is regularly cited as a key element of a good work-life balance and, therefore is an important factor for candidates when they are considering a job. Developing a strategic school-level approach to flexible working could therefore help to retain and attract high-quality teachers and leaders.
The move towards greater flexible working specifically sprang from the necessity of reacting to the Covid-19 pandemic, and came with challenges due to the scale of flexibility required, including the blurring of work and home boundaries, and the related risk of ‘work creep’. However, it has also highlighted the opportunities that working flexibly can bring.
One key change has been a greater understanding that some aspects of the job can easily be achieved remotely. For example, teachers have been setting and marking work from home, and many schools have delivered live virtual lessons.
Other valuable learnings from this time include an increased use of technology and improved levels of communication. Stakeholder engagement suggests that Senior Leadership Team and department meetings have continued, over digital platforms, and leaders and managers have become more aware of the commitments and responsibilities that their colleagues have outside of work. Moreover, delegation has been coupled with empowerment, giving many middle leaders the opportunity to better understand and manage their teams.
School leaders now have the opportunity to reflect on some of the flexible working practices that have developed during this time. They can explore which have worked well, and which have been less successful, and refine and incorporate effective practices accordingly. This will enable the creation flexible working strategies that benefit both individual staff and the whole school.
School leaders have faced significant challenges during both school closures and their re-opening. There is now an opportunity to consider a more proactive and strategic approach to flexible working.
School leaders set the expectations and parameters of behaviours in their school and do so by what they say, do, reward and measure. So their role shouldn’t just be about considering flexible working applications and how to make them work in practice reactively; it should be about talking a more proactive, whole-school approach.
This includes, for example: communicating the school’s commitment to flexibility and the principles which surround it; creating a sense of shared responsibility for discussing and trialling flexible working to see what works; integrating flexible working planning into timetabling and recruitment processes throughout the school year; and reviewing its implementation with individuals, and as a team, on a regular basis.
There is a real opportunity to consider wider messaging around flexible working: what was said (and understood by staff) previously; what communications have gone out during the Covid-19 period; and what headteachers want to say to their staff about the future.
As a starting point to building a more proactive approach, SLTs should consider where their school currently stands, and where it wants to be. This includes considering their vision, and exploring how increased flexible working can contribute to strategic priorities around recruitment, retention, and staff wellbeing. It also involves being open about not being sure what is possible, whilst having a firm commitment to trying.
Schools leaders should develop their communication plans (for staff and, eventually, for other stakeholders), recognising what people have experienced before and during Covid-19, and their possible aspirations for the future. It is advisable to work with people in small groups or existing teams when consulting staff – there are too many interdependencies in the school environment to do this on an individual basis.
It is also important to engage staff in exploring what flexibility is possible, what sort of patterns they might be looking for in the future, and what sort of working practices can support this across the school. Where do they need further clarity and guidance? Similarly, it is important to capture what has been learnt during the pandemic, and to create a sense of shared responsibility. There are likely to be a number of changes which school leaders can make permanent, including remote CPD, virtual team meetings and individual consultations about home and work needs.
Following this planning and data gathering, leaders will be able to start deciding what may be possible moving forward, what will have the most impact, and how to achieve it. It can be useful to action-plan this in terms of quick-wins (staff meetings allowing dial-ins), medium-term changes (teams self-rostering to allow for early starts and finishes) and long-term goals (mapping an annual process to align individual preference choices with timetabling and recruitment).
Once these are agreed, the overall vision and plans for its execution need to be set out in a clear flexible working policy, and communicated to the whole school, so that all staff are clear about what is available to them. Other policies, both new and existing, will also need to be aligned with any new plans.
Leaders should also be prepared to commit some resource to each action to ensure it is implemented and to keep up the momentum. Lastly, they need to ensure staff are engaged in the process – both in terms of what is working and what needs to be improved.
[1] Worth, J., Lynch, S., Hillary, J., Rennie, C. and Andrade, J. (2018), Teacher Workforce Dynamics in England.
