Education secretary backs letting teachers work from home – as Labour looks to offer lie-ins and shorter working weeks to make the job appealing to Gen Z_Nhy
The Education Secretary has backed measures that will allow teachers to work from home as Labour looks to offer lie-ins and shorter working weeks to make the job appealing.
Bridget Phillipson said all state school teachers should be allowed to work away from the classroom when marking, lesson planning and performing pupil assessment.
It comes after figures published last month showed 47% of participants were considering leaving the English state school sector because of a ‘lack of flexible working opportunities’.
Warnings about teaching becoming less attractive over its limited opportunities to work from home were raised with the previous government last year.
The Labour government included in its manifesto a plan to recruit 6,500 new teachers and in order to reach that goal Phillipson, intends to put measures in place to make it more convenient for staff.
Under the plans, headteachers will be told they can let their staff do marking and lesson preparation from the comfort of their own home.
The incentives are designed to prevent teachers from leaving the classroom altogether and to attract Gen Z recruits.
Ms Phillipson told The Observer: ‘Children’s life chances suffer without world-class teachers in our classrooms – that’s why it’s never been more urgent that we grip the teacher recruitment and retention crisis raging in our schools.
Bridget Phillipson said all state school teachers should be allowed to work away from the classroom when marking, lesson planning and performing pupil assessment
Under the plans, headteachers will be told they can let their staff do marking and lesson preparation from the comfort of their own home
‘That’s what this Government will do, by taking innovative examples from academies in offering more flexibility without reducing the teaching time with pupils.
‘Our new Children’s Wellbeing Bill will transform children’s life chances, helping us break the link between their background and what they can go on to achieve: that means driving up standards across every school.’
Addressing the education select committee in November 2023, Philip Nye, a data scientist at the Institute for Government, said: ‘Teaching I think, historically, has been seen as quite family-friendly. You get the long summer break which if you have family responsibilities could be very useful.
‘But now, perhaps compared to other non-public sector roles, it is not as flexible and family-friendly as it once was.’
He said: ‘It makes teaching a bit less competitive because it can’t really offer that kind of work from home or flexible options.’
The measures would give teachers the option to take their free periods in blocks at the end or the beginning of the day, enabling them to work from home while looking after children, or to complete the school run.
A survey of 3,000 16-24-year-olds published in September by Teach First found that while 73 per cent regarded teaching as a job with purpose, 42 per cent thought it looked stressful and 36 per cent thought it was poorly paid.
However, some schools across the country have already started offering incentives to make the job more attractive.
The new Labour government included in its manifesto a plan to recruit 6,500 new teachers and in order to reach that goal Education Secretary, Phillipson intends to put measures in place to make it more convenient for staff to work from home
Teachers are set to be offered lie-ins and work from home options as part of a drive to encourage more people to join the profession
At All Saints Catholic College, a state school in Kensington, every teacher enjoys a double period off one morning a week.
The headteacher at the school, Andrew O’Neill, told The Guardian: ‘Teaching is a performance profession. You need to be on your A-game every single day of the week and that’s difficult.
‘My approach has always been that we need to treat teachers like elite athletes. They are given the best treatment. They are looked after and they’re cared for.’
Shocking data from the Department for Education revealed that almost as many people left teaching as entered it. A staggering 43,522 left the profession last year as 44,002 joined.
To prevent to continued hemorrhaging of staff from the profession, Pepe Di’Iasio, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders has said she will support any measures that make teaching more attractive.
Ms Di’lasio told MailOnline in September: ‘We support anything which helps to make teaching more flexible and improves the attractiveness of the profession as a career choice amidst an ongoing recruitment and retention crisis.
‘There will be a lot of detail that needs working out on this proposal and we look forward to discussing this with the government.
‘This initiative may help to a certain extent but it is important to understand that it will not be enough to solve the problem of teacher shortages. The only way to do that is to improve pay and conditions.’
