The head of the UK’s largest education union has said all full-time teachers should be able to work one day a week from home.
Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the National Education Union (NEU), told the Sunday Times that teachers need flexible working patterns to combat the recruitment and retention crisis.
The right to work four days in school and the fifth at home, as well as greater flexibility such as staggered start and finish times, should be part of this, Mr Kebede said.
Teachers are currently entitled to give 10% of their work hours to preparing lessons and marking (PPA) and the time can vary each week, depending on finding cover for classes.
However, studies have found many teachers cannot fit the work into that amount of time and regularly work unpaid on evenings and weekends.
A full-time teacher works an average 52 hours a week in term-time, official figures suggest, while the average for a full-time worker is 36 hours a week.
School leaders work nearly 57 hours a week, the Department for Education (DfE) recorded.
Mr Kebede called on the Government to double PPA time to 20% and told the Times this would “then allow teachers to do four days (at school) and one day planning, which would be at home.
“Staggered starts and finishes and remote planning would make a real big difference. Does a physics teacher need to be in at 8am in the morning?”
The head of the union, which has more than 500,000 members, added: “Timetabling can allow for staggered starts and you also just need the Government and employers to trust that teachers are doing their work as necessary”.
A poll published in April, of more than 14,100 NEU teacher members in state schools in England, suggested more than half (56%) said the rate of staff leaving their workplace has got worse in the past year.
Teachers said it is commonplace for them to work evenings (62%), weekends (55%), and more than a third (36%) said they frequently cancel plans in order to get on top of their workload.
The poll, carried out between January 28 and February 9, suggested that nearly a third (31%) of teachers are “always” dealing with work during the school holidays, with a further 60% “often” or “sometimes” doing so.
Just 9% said they have a complete break.
Mr Kebede said in a statement: “Teachers already work what is effectively a seven-day week, and this is by the Department for Education’s own measure.
“Full-time teachers work on average 51 hours per week, and school leaders 57 hours per week. It is no surprise that we are in a recruitment and retention crisis.”
A total of 9.5% of fully qualified teachers left the profession in the UK in 2022 to 2023, the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) found in analysis published on Tuesday.
More than 80% of them resigned rather than retired between 2022 and 2023 in the UK, it said, while France and Ireland recorded fewer than 50% of departures as resignations.
Lithuania, Denmark and Estonia were the only countries of the 14 studied that had a higher proportion of resignations than the UK.
On average, around half (51%) of fully qualified teachers who left the profession resigned in the OECD pool of 14 countries.
Mr Kebede added: “We want to work with Government to find solutions that will help address unsustainable workload levels and stop talented people from leaving teaching.
“It means making sure teachers are spending time on the activities that actually help students learn rather than on tick boxes and bureaucracy.
“It also means taking on the woolly language in contracts, to signal to every employer that reasonable working hours must be achieved so staff do not burn out.”
He added: “The reason so many teachers work extraordinarily long hours is to achieve all the tasks, planning and marking they need to get done. Just because a teacher is not in front of a classroom teaching children does not mean they are not hard at work. This is a myth that needs exploding.”
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