Tag Archives: bank holidays

Four-day week for teachers?

Posted on by
Reply

A Labour MP has called for a four-day working week to be introduced across the public sector.

Lib Dem-run South Cambridgeshire District Council’s cabinet will meet today to approve the continuation of the trial for all desk-based staff as well as extending it to cover caretakers and binmen. 

These are just two of the headlines from an article that I read this morning. What would be the implications for teachers of the introduction of a four-day week? The answer depends upon whether the same amount of face-to-face contact with pupils was maintained as at present and whether that was contact time spread over four or five days? What effect would four longer school days have on pupils, especially younger pupils? After all, some early years settings already offer wrap around care that is much longer than the traditional school-day.

What would the psychologists and those that study brain development in children have to say about putting five days of work into four? Perhaps a model would develop of four days of taught time and the fifth for ‘homework’ or supplementary activities.

On the plus side, parents also working a four-day week would have an extra day with their children: on the downside, parents whose working week did not coincide with the school four-day week would have to deal with the need for extra childcare.

Any change would come with a cost both to individuals and to the State. If there wasn’t sufficient funding, schools might be tempted to cram the teaching into four days and use the fifth day to generate income from their school sites and playing fields.

In a sector struggling to recruit enough teachers at present, would a four-day week make the profession more or less attractive to potential teachers. Certainly, if the bulk of graduate careers moved to a four-day week, teaching, already operating an employer-driven form of flexi-time, might be unattractive without some other boost to conditions of work.

A four-day working week might be a real challenge to the private school sector, where the additional costs would most likely have to be passed on to parents through increased fees. An increase of this magnitude might drive more parents back into the state sector, upping the cost of state education to the government. Add VAT on to the costs, and such numbers switching might increase still further.

During the Corbyn era, Labour proposed four additional bank holidays for workers; all during school holidays, so teachers would have seen no benefit from them. The implications for the teaching profession and others working in schools of the widespread introduction of a four-day working week do need to be considered.

However, I don’t think that the present model of schooling will continue as it has for the past 150 years. The AI revolution may well turn out to be as profound for society as the microchip revolution that started in the 1970s and transformed the world of work beyond recognition in many areas, but only to a limited degree in schools.

 Technology and its interaction with the process of schooling has further to go in the future. Perhaps the pressure for a four-day working week for humans might be the catalyst for major changes in schooling?

How much holiday do teachers have?

Posted on by
Reply

According to the DfE’s Teacher recruitment website

Holidays

You’ll get more days holiday than people in many other professions. In school, full-time teachers work 195 days per year.

For comparison, you’d work 227 days per year (on average) if you worked full time in an office.

Teaching salaries and benefits | Get Into Teaching (education.gov.uk)

So, it is permissible according to the government, to never be in school when the pupils are not present except for the five compulsory days required. Those days were originally known as ‘Baker Days’ after the Secretary of State that mandated their requirement.

Of course, the DfE site doesn’t say anything about the length of the school day, and the marking and preparation time spent in the evenings, at weekends, and during the alleged holiday period that make up a teacher’s typical working day.

A more useful analyses of the working year might add the following days – assuming the five days pupils are not present account for all the days immediately pre and post the three terms of the year – to the 195 total.

Two hours a day during term-time on marking and preparation and meetings outside a working day of a period between eight am until four pm would add more than a day a week to the total taking it from 195 days (DfE number) by adding an extra 38 days a year meaning the working year would then be 233 days a year compared with the DfE calculation of 227 as an average for an office worker of an unspecified grade. Now, make that an average of three hours a day – probably not unreasonable for most weeks – and the total moves to around 250 days a year.

The length of the working day and the compensation for the length of the working day isn’t something mentioned on the DfE recruitment site. Find a teaching job with no planning – all done for you – and no marking needed outside of the school day – and there are still parents’ evening to attend that can add four days to the total – one half days for each year group plus one for the new intake, plus perhaps a couple of marketing evenings to showcase the school to potential pupils and their parents. Then there are after-school activities ranging from supervising the buses in the car park to accompanying teams to sports fixture, music and drama events and science competitions.

It is difficult to see how a teacher that wants to do their job properly can manage less than 227 days a year.

On top of this, most other workers have been gaining bank holidays over the years, whereas most additional days have fallen within existing school holidays, except for the Bank Holiday at the beginning of May each year. In 2017, the Labour Party suggested the need for four extra bank holidays Bank holidays for teachers? | John Howson (wordpress.com) that suggestion would not have benefitted teachers at all.

So, if told teachers have long holiday, and remember that the DfE says so, remind people that teachers work a form of employer-driven flexitime that means most teachers work longer on average than many other employees, although they do still have job security in most cases and there is the pension to consider.

Bank holidays for teachers?

Posted on by
3

The Labour Party’s announcement of wanting to introduce four new bank holidays on Saint’s Days (I thought Corbyn’s Labour didn’t do religion) is either an attempt to lose the education vote or the parents’ vote.

Either way, if implemented, it would likely harm the education system. Drop 4 days from the education year, reducing it down to 186 and school staff including teachers benefit, unless on term-time only contracts and these are seen as not being term-time days. Parents have to find four more days of childcare if they have to work on bank holidays. Since these days move around, they won’t even create long weekend every year.

However, keep the school year at 190 days and teachers and other workers in schools won’t see the benefits of the extra holidays. This reminds me of my previous post about Labour and pay policies in the 1970s and the effects on teachers working conditions and benefits when non-pay benefits were more important than pay rises.

Labour needs to tell the education community what the announcement means for them, apart from more disruption in November, March and sometimes April as well. I wonder why Labour didn’t go for celebrating the Tolpuddle Martyrs; Annie Besant’s birthday; Emily Pankhurst Day and perhaps Revolutionary Figures (non-sexist) Day to celebrate those that fought against Empire and oppression around the world. Saint’s Days seem just a bit passé and what we might have chosen as a country to take as holidays before the Reformation.

With an economy that doesn’t boast the best productivity record, adding another four days to the paid holiday calendar doesn’t seen a great way to run the economy either. Perhaps Labour is really thinking of the trade union workers that can charge extra pay for working on bank holidays: do they still have a day off as well? For them, it will be a great bribe to vote for Corbyn, especially if the Conservatives really don’t pledge not to raise taxes in the next parliament.

At least none of these Saint’s days fall within the main examination period, so there won’t be the disruption there has been in higher education where the summer term bank holidays all seem to fall on a Monday. But, perhaps Labour has given up on increasing manufacturing as the solution to our nation’s economic problems post a hard BREXIT and sees the way forward as a dance and skylark economy.