Help staff achieve a healthy work–life balance

Whole-staff training days have been part of the school calendar since 1988 and are most often used to gather all the staff together for professional development. It is easier in small schools to identify professional development that will benefit everyone than it is in large schools. In addition, where a new teaching and learning initiative is introduced during a training day, small schools find it easier than large schools to both assess the impact on teaching and learning and to make adjustments to make the impact more effective.

A frequent observation by staff is that training days introduce too many initiatives that don’t have time to become integrated with teaching and learning practice. In addition, time for planning follow-up and reviewing progress is often limited.

You should consider the following:

• Ask whether it is necessary to gather all the staff for the whole of each training day. Especially at the beginning of the year, staff are mostly brought together to receive information about the timetable, the school calendar and changes to the school’s schedule from the previous year. In larger schools, particularly in KS3–KS5, staff then split to have departmental/pastoral meetings. Could time spent meeting as a whole staff or in departments be reduced so that staff have time to plan individually?
• Consider whether training all staff together is the most effective way of providing professional development. Could some of the training be done individually?
• Consider whether new initiatives in teaching and learning should be restricted to one or two each academic year with pre-planned time built in for personal reflection and planning.

Top tips

• Share something new that staff may benefit from.
• Make the training active to keep staff engaged.
• Schedule breaks.
• Ask for feedback and use it to inform future training sessions.

Further resources

• Check out these top tips for optimising staff training days.

The effect of parent-teacher meetings on pupil learning and behaviour is a matter of debate. Teachers often report that there is an impact on some pupils in the days immediately following parent-teacher meetings but that this reduces quickly, lasting only for one or two weeks.

In secondary schools, teachers teach their subjects to a range of year groups and typically attend parent-teacher meetings for each year group as well as tutor meetings, as most have responsibility for a tutor group or form. In a school with years 12 and 13, it is not unusual for a teacher to attend seven parent-teacher meetings, each lasting three hours or more.

It will be noted that primary school parent-teacher meetings are potentially more effective, as the class teacher is summarising overall progress and may meet parents once or twice a year. Parent appointments, especially of younger children, can also be scheduled immediately after the end of the school day, as some parents collect their children at the school gates. While this does not reduce workload, there is no ‘dead’ time between the end of the school day and the start of the parent consultations.

The questions that this intention challenges you to ask are:

• Is the time that teachers spend on giving feedback to parents and the impact on teachers’ workload and wellbeing justified? If not, how can you amend this policy to positively impact teachers’ work–life balance?
• Must the meetings be conducted face-to-face?
• Should parent-teacher meetings (together with end-of-year reports) be the only opportunity for feedback?

Schools, especially in the secondary sector, have found that online meetings (run by Teams or Zoom) can have many benefits:

• They are more efficient and avoid backlogs of parents waiting for face-to-face meetings as consultations ahead of them often run over time.
• The teacher has far more control of the meetings, including being able to reschedule a meeting if necessary. The teacher can also make notes in the chat at the same time or after the meeting to be saved for future reference.
• Parents do not have to travel to school. They can log in to the meeting at home.
• Teachers also have the choice of whether to remain in school or to conduct consultations from home.

Top tips

• One secondary school replaced parent-teacher consultations with a system where each teacher uses 30 minutes of their directed time each week to ring parents about something that 10 of their pupils have done well, no matter how small, for example, trying hard for a time during a lesson. The school plans the calls so that each pupil’s parents are contacted at least once before the system of calls starts again, with a different teacher contacting each child’s parents. Parents are asked to praise their children following the call.
• While planning the calls centrally is time-consuming and complex, teachers report longer-term improvement in pupils’ behaviour and work. Parents of challenging pupils were able to congratulate them for something positive that they had done. The planning time needed to implement the scheme was more than paid back in the improvement in teachers’ wellbeing, resulting from the reduction in pupils’ misbehaviour and improvement in their work.

Further resources

• Follow this quick tutorial for using Microsoft Teams.
• Here is a guide to using Zoom.

Flexible working can be defined as ‘arrangements which allow employees to vary the amount, timing, or location of their work’ and has been defined by the DfE as:

• part-time working (part-time, job share and phased retirement)
• varied hours (staggered hours, compressed hours, annualised hours)
• in-year flexibility (personal or family days, lieu time, home or remote working).

The introduction of flexible working opportunities for employees in the corporate sector has positively influenced appointments and consideration of part-time contracts in schools. Flexible arrival and departure times have become more frequent as teachers with young children, single parents, teachers with a health condition and those caring for vulnerable family members have been able to continue teaching where flexible arrangements have been applied.

Schools report the benefits of implementing flexible working as:

• retaining experienced staff
• recruiting from a broader pool of teachers
• promoting wellbeing
• improving work–life balance.

In addition, where schools enable members of staff to attend important family events, such as their children’s nativity play or sports day, this not only improves staff wellbeing but increases staff engagement and loyalty to the school. It also improves recruitment, as word of mouth gets around that the school values its staff. As most teachers are women and it is women who still mostly look after their children in a partnership, working in a school with flexible arrangements is a great advantage. It is arguably even more beneficial for single parents.

When introducing or expanding flexible working opportunities in your school, nothing should be considered ‘off the table’. Question long-standing views that ‘flexible arrangements wouldn’t work in this case’. There is often a balance between the wellbeing of staff and the effect on pupil progress and learning. Consider the impact on pupil learning of a teacher who is less tired, more motivated, happier and feels that their family is valued.

Top tips

Questions to ask:

• When appointing to a flexible post, consider whether a job share would be possible. Could another teacher be sourced?
• Could an existing member of staff or a qualified TA take the register if the class/form teacher needs to arrive later after dropping off their own children at nursery or childcare?
• Could directed time be found for teachers who share a class to plan together? Could they use the Cloud to share resources and for example, WhatsApp to keep in touch?

Further resources

• Learn more about the DfE’s latest non-statutory guidance on flexible working in schools.

For many people, the advent of email on smartphones and other devices has had a pervasive and negative effect on their workload, implying permanent availability and demanding immediate responses. There are many ways to mitigate staff email overload and you should discuss these with your staff to create an email protocol that works for them. For example:

• Implement an ‘email curfew’ (for instance, no emails sent) after 5pm and before 8am and not at all at weekends.
• Outline email etiquette so that staff know when and how to reply to emails.
• Make it clear if emails are sent out of work hours whether staff are expected to respond.
• Encourage staff to email mindfully, for example: not copying in people unnecessarily; having a clear subject line; being clear about what action is required in response to the email; not sending an email if a quick conversation or phone call would be more effective.
• Provide training on how to use email effectively (for example, setting up rules, folders and shortcuts, standardised ‘out of office’ replies).
• Only allow the headteacher/PA to send ‘all staff’ emails to cut down on unnecessary traffic.

You may choose for your communications policy to tackle phone calls, messaging, parent meetings and social media too – as well as email communication.

Top tip

• Remember to share your policy widely with parents to ensure they understand the protocol and what it means for them in terms of expecting responses. 

A common complaint about professional learning concerns resources, primarily time. To help with this, many schools have established slots in calendars for teachers to have a regular developmental space – for reflection, practical workshops, personal planning and sharing of practice via TeachMeets, reading and any other professional development activities. A few institutions have even made 60–90 minutes per week/per fortnight available for all staff with no classes running.

Review your CPD calendar to ensure staff are not being asked to attend in their own time and amend it accordingly. It's important to think of this time as an investment – by giving staff time to reflect on and refine their practice, you are increasing the chances that they will be able to continually improve their teaching.

Top tips

• Any collaborative learning process that also has a nurturing element has the potential to boost wellbeing. There is much wellbeing to be derived from easily organised, informal collaborations that cost little and can boost morale, such as a reading group focusing on relevant texts for professional learning can develop into an effective source of support; lunch bites, where small chunks of professional learning are shared over lunch.

Further resources

• Here’s a quick guide to planning and hosting a TeachMeet.
• Find out more about Lunch and Learn events.

Staff break duties can lead to staff having little or no ‘down time’ during the day. It is common for staff to avoid drinking water because they are unable to go to the toilet. Restricted water intake can lead to tiredness, headaches and difficulty focusing. Consider ways of enabling staff to take breaks in the construction of the timetable, as well as to introduce support after the timetable has been finalised.

When constructing the timetable, look for opportunities to build in natural breaks during the school day when staff are on break duty. This is usually a non-contact period before or after break.

In primary schools, where the teacher is with one class during the day and does not have a non-teaching period or in secondary schools where it has been impossible to create a non-teaching period before or after the break duty, consider other ways of enabling staff to have a break, if only to use the toilet. Some suggestions:

• A member of the leadership team is on duty and staff can text to request that they take over their lesson while they use the toilet.
• Each member of staff is paired with another and they act as one another’s ‘buddy’. If one of them is free when the other is teaching, they can step into their buddy’s class to take over. Larger schools might consider expanding the pair to a trio or group of four.

Top tip

• Consider using a pupil runner to take a note to a member of staff or to the school office if texting is impossible.