Can a teacher work from home? It may sound illogical, but this week the government announced plans to strengthen teachers’ right to work remotely as part of an initiative to incentivise staff and tackle the recruitment crisis in schools.
In a bid to stem the tide of teachers leaving at the end of each term, staff will now be told that they can do marking and planning sessions away from school – so instead of using evenings and weekends, which many teachers already do, they would be able to take this time at the start or end of the day, which could help with childcare or other external responsibilities.
Such flexible working was already available in theory, but it was open to interpretation by individual headteachers. Now, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson will set out guidance to make clear that timetabled PPA (Planning, Preparation, and Assessment) can be done at home instead of on school premises.
Parents are divided about the idea – with some questioning whether the move is in the best interests of their children.
Laura’s* child is at a primary school where teachers can already do their PPA at home (her husband used to be a primary teacher and did the same). She doesn’t object to teachers working like this: “Whether primary school teachers do their PPA at home or in the staff room makes zero difference to me or the kids,” she says.
What she does dislike are teaching assistants being relied upon to plug timetable gaps in those schools that would otherwise have to limit students’ instruction to cover for teachers’ PPA time.
It’s not unusual that higher level teaching assistants (HLTA) or teaching assistants are used in this way in primaries, she says, but adds: “I’m not sure I agree with children being taught by a non-teacher [unqualified teacher] full stop. Ideally, they’d be taught by a fully qualified teacher 100 per cent of the time, but schools just don’t have the budget to employ a fully qualified PPA cover teacher full time.
“It’s different in secondary schools, because the PPA time is broken up into ‘frees’ across the week for the teacher and the students are just in another subject during those frees, so it’s not like they need to cover that class with a teaching assistant.”
Chloe, who has two children aged five and seven and lives in south London, has also recently discovered the role the teaching assistant is playing on a regular basis: “I have recently gathered that our child’s teacher is not in class one day a week, to do planning. Their TA takes over that day, and the teacher sometimes works from home.
“I understand this is not a new thing, and I have a lot of sympathy as I know teachers have a huge amount of paperwork – but it’s obviously not ideal that for a fifth of my daughter’s time in school, she’s taught by a TA. They are lovely, but their level of experience is not in any way comparable – it will be more of a worry the older my daughter gets.”
Other parents have expressed frustration about school leaders being absent from the site. One father told i that the headteacher at his child’s primary school works from home every Friday. On Mumsnet, in March this year, a mother claimed that the headteacher of her child’s small primary school “works from home one to two days a week. Is this ‘normal’?”
Hybrid working has swept the UK post-pandemic, with 28 per cent of workers reporting they follow a hybrid model, according to the Office for National Statistics – but some industries have benefited more than others, with some roles naturally lending themselves to distance work.
Teachers already benefit from the trend: a Department for Education report in 2022 found 40 per cent of teachers and leaders reported some kind of flexible working arrangement with their school. Most commonly this was working part time (21 per cent), followed by PPA time offsite (12 per cent). Primary teachers and leaders were more likely to report this than secondary teachers (50 per cent versus 29 per cent).
At the Dixon Academies Trust, which runs a number of academies across Leeds, Bradford, Manchester, and Liverpool, teachers are already offered flexible working, and chief executive Luke Sparkes is moving the trust to a nine-day fortnight from September.
At St Paul’s Way in Tower Hamlets, east London, secondary teachers are entitled to 17 per cent of their timetabled hours for PPA – higher than the average of 10 per cent – and from the new term, teachers were being offered 100 minutes of PPA from home every fortnight. There are also informal arrangements in place for staff members to work from home for time-sensitive jobs.
Schools across the country are under ever-greater pressure to adapt: 39,971 teachers left state-funded teaching in 22-23 (nearly nine per cent of the workforce) for reasons other than retirement. A similar number left in the previous calendar year. They are not being replaced quickly enough: a total of 11.3 per cent quit in 2022/23 after just one year of teaching, and vacancies have increased by 20 per cent to 2,800 as of November last year.
Flexible working approaches have been one of the factors identified as having the potential to retain teachers, according to research by the Education Endowment Foundation in 2023.
And teachers do want more time out of the classroom: a parliamentary petition was set up in 2021 to increase the minimum PPA time from 10 per cent to 20 per cent. A DfE report found that 66 per cent of teachers spent more than half of their working time on tasks other than teaching – such as planning lessons, marking books or exams, writing reports, contacting parents and pastoral care, and other admin – rising to 77 per cent of secondary teachers, despite not being given the time to do so.
“The fact that other professions offer flexible options means many teachers will look elsewhere for work that is more compatible with family life,” says Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the National Education Union. “We see this reflected in the increase of women leaving the profession in their 30s.
“Allowing staff to work from home where possible is the right thing to do to address the retention crisis. This must be coupled with improved pay and reduced workload.”
Despite her misgivings about the use of teaching assistants, Laura* says she does think “it’s a good thing that Labour are thinking of making this mandatory for schools”. “I think leaders who tend to micromanage their staff are the ones who don’t let teachers off site,” she says. “They need to start treating teachers as the trusted professionals they are. They have this time out of the classroom anyway, so why not let them do it at home?”
Next month, the government will publish an employment rights bill that would make flexible working a default right for employees from day one of their job.
The Department of Education has been approached for comment.