Interesting article Steve and having just struggled through compiling our report it makes for interesting reading.

I think the final sentence says it all about supporting staff as they start a family. My feeling is that there is a large cultural shift needed about promoting flexible working at a more senior level - until that happens those figures are likely to remain tilted.

In reply to Sarah Trueman:

Anecdotal observation: not too long ago I supported a family friend who had been in my opinion wrongly treated when she tried to continue flexible (part time) working as a primary school teacher in order to care for her increasingly-frail mother. The Head Teacher of her school had flatly refused to allow her to continue as part time and (as they tend to do) the school governing body took her word as gospel and rubberstamped all her decisions.

She ended up resigning and although very traumatised by it all between me and her union ended up taking the school to a Tribunal and largely discrediting the school's stance and winning her unfair constructive dismissal claim.

The Chair of the Governors had a rough but illuminating experience at the Tribunal Hearing and not long afterwards the Head Teacher herself resigned.

To me, it was a typical example of Head Teachers thinking they were all-knowing and all-powerful. The main reason for refusal of part time was that 'the children need the classroom stability and continuity of a full time Year Teacher' for which there was absolutely no independent evidence - in fact the available evidence suggested that part time teachers provided a *better* classroom experience!

In reply to David:

We have many part time teaching staff and I wonder if it's easier to manage at secondary level. I do think leaders struggle more with the "how will we manage this person" rather than can we make it work? We only have a handful of part time middle leaders and none at senior level. Having recently completed my Level 7 qualification we came across an exam question about the barriers of flexible working at senior level. I argued (sorry discussed!) then, and will continue to do so, that organisations need to see the bigger picture of the opportunities that flexible working can bring. I'd rather have a high-performing leader for a part of the week than full time if that's all that was possible. Obviously not just a problem in schools.

In reply to Sarah Trueman:

Interesting point Sarah. Surely the answer to "how will we manage this person working flexibly" is "in the same way as you would when they work standard hours" i.e. focus on outputs and performance and treat them as the responsible adult they are.
Interestingly there appears to be a growing interest in job-share in teaching at present - which makes sense both as a way of retaining teachers when they have a family and also reducing the stress they experience when working long hours.

In reply to Anna:

The primary school (actually academy since 1 April) that I am a governor at has a high number of part time and job share teachers. We have had an informal policy (encouraged by me) of accepting a request as long as we have the ability to create a job share partnership to fit the hours a teacher wants and someone to partner them with.

There are positives and negatives - on the plus side, we have used practically no supply staff for several years as the job share partners will cover each other's absences very flexibly. This maintains a brilliant continuity of learning for the children. In addition the school and the children benefit from twice as many skills and and interests that each teacher brings - for example my son's class has one teacher who leads on numeracy and the other leads on literacy - this enables them each to bring a deeper specialism than one teacher doing both. We have teachers who specialise in technology, wellbeing, sport, music, art etc and who use these skills to develop other teachers, bring new ideas to the school and offer out of school clubs to enrich the school experience. We get twice as many opportunities as we have twice as many teachers. ;-) Another advantage from a parent and pupil perspective is that if your child has a teacher that they don't get on with (as my son did last year), then they only have them for half a week rather than all the time. The job teachers are also very flexible about which classes they teach and who they partner with from year to year as they see that as part of the agreement, which makes sorting out the class structure each year much easier.

On the minus side, the Head and Senior leaders have twice as much appraisal and performance management to do. Communication becomes more challenging as you can't just have one staff meeting a week. Teacher training days become more costly if you want everyone to attend. But I think these aspects are manageable with the right processes in place.

In reply to Jacqueline:

Really interesting Jackie. Real life case studies like this are so helpful in moving the agenda forward.
For those looking for job-share support or partners I have curated a list - currently 17 organisations - on twitter here: twitter.com/.../members

Including this interesting one - the Shared Headship Network: www.sharedheadshipnetwork.com/

In reply to Anna:

Hi Anna

It’s quite ancient now, but in connection with our family friend’s dispute, i dug out a research study about schools’ experiences of the benefits or otherwise of flexible working amongst teachers.

If I still have it buried in the digital archives somewhere, I’ll try and post a link to it, for possible information.

I do think this report is being used out of context - having watched a lot of the news etc people do keep banging on about men and women being paid differently, but this report fails to highlight the roles in which they do. I know some companies have gone into more detail to show there is no inequality within roles/levels, however, the real issue, which some have highlighted, is that there are less women in senior roles.

In my MAT, 7 out of 8 Headteachers are female, however, our CEO is male and has greatly skewed the stats. If our CEO was female it would have shown our results the other way.

Most schools also have graded pay scales, so like for like jobs, regardless of any characteristic, are paid the same. In my team, we have 3 female and 2 male HODs and we're all paid the same (Finance, HR, Facilities etc).

I believe the issue is the expectation for women to (mostly) be the main carer within the family. I have many (girl)friends who never sought a career because they wanted kids, thus, now have lower paid jobs due to inexperience.

I myself took time out to have a child, and I hate being told 'but you're lucky' - no, I studied and worked full time and pursued my career. I work in schools now, but I work all year and make it work. Where I was lucky was having a partner who was willing to be a stay at home Dad despite being mocked. It never happened in the end as we managed to find suitable childcare, but there highlights the 2 main issues IMHO - 1) the stigma around fathers' roles in childcare, as this would ease the burden on women, particularly in the workplace, and 2) childcare costs etc.

We have one school where job share and PT working is quite high, and they are struggling financially due to the increasing cost burden. So whilst I'm all for flexible working and supporting families, in this particular case, we may be looking at redundancies down the line due to not being able to maintain that structure.

In another school, we had a TA asking to leave an hour early under a FWR citing after school club costs for her child, however, when we sat with her, she was actually better off working that hour and paying for the school club. She still wanted that hour off, which was her right to request, but she couldn't understand herself why she wanted it off other than she was the mum.

Addressing the senior level roles - whilst having someone work PT than not at all is ideal, sometimes when you need them to be able to attend meetings and boosters outside school hours and work additional hours, those who are carers (mostly women) are unable to commit.

Overall, it is a cultural issue that needs addressing - a company could give fathers all the support in the world but atm it's not wanted enough due to societal norms. And unless the "second" earner is going to clear in excess of £1k pm to pay for full-time childcare, then they are likely to take an employment break which impacts progression.

Sorry for the rant, but this hits quite close to home.

In reply to Kimberly:

Feel free to rant Kimberly. It's good to get things out in the open otherwise nothing changes. And just to respond to your points:

In the financially stretched world of education I can understand how extra costs associated with flexible working put pressure on budgets. In the case of the school you cite I assume they will be able to replace the flexible workers with full-time teachers. However this is not always the case. I understand there are areas such as London with hard to fill vacancies. In these circumstances I guess they would consider the costs of supply teachers vs flexible arrangements and work out a tangible business case.

Re your comments about fathers and social expectations, I feel you're being a little simplistic. There's an increasing body of research (check out the Working Families website for example) that shows younger men DO want to get more involved with childcare/child-rearing but the main obstacles are corporate cultures that penalise them in career terms when they do (I know it's been happening to women for many years but that doesn't make it any easier). Plus SPL is currently paid at such a low rate that most fathers (who continue to see themselves as the main breadwinners) don't feel they can afford to take it.

In reply to Jacqueline:

Really interesting, Jackie - especially the flexibility enabling teachers to cover for each other.

In reply to David:

Found that aged OFSTED Study. Not sure if there's been further published research in the past few years but then this was the only relevant thing I could find:

www.evernote.com/.../

It might be useful still  to  counter any arguments from reactionary etc Head Teachers and the like that part timers and job sharers are not able to be wholly effective teachers

In reply to Anna:

Just for information there's also this one: Return to Teach which states it supports teacher retention by offering flexible teaching: https://returntoteach.co.uk/

In reply to Anna:

Nice link, Anna :)