The boss of one of the country’s biggest academy trusts has suggested the “archaic” directed time cap for teachers should be reviewed, saying “if we want to be seen as a profession we can’t continue to rigidly count hours”.
Becks Boomer-Clark, chief executive of Lift Schools, said instead of “counting hours”, Gen Z teachers want “flexibility, fluidity, a sense of purpose”.
Directed time is the number of hours in a year during which school leaders can direct teachers to be at work and available for work.
The Conservative government had explored ditching the cap in 2021, but a union leader said at the time any move would be “met with fury in the profession”.
But Boomer-Clark, speaking at Labour conference fringe event today, said: “I’m not sure there are as many professions that count hours, and that’s one of the really challenging things, I think, in terms of breaking us free.
“Recognising actually what learning looks like, seeing time as an absolutely finite resource, but actually also acting as professionals if we want to be seen as a profession.”
Need for ‘more mature’ model
She said the directed hours model was a “really archaic way to look at professions as we move into this next phase”.
“I think that we’ve got to have a much more mature and sophisticated and flexible understanding of time.
“When I speak to our Gen Z teachers coming through now, I’m having to really cast aside things that I’ve long held as a sort of absolutely cast iron truth, to understand what it is that they want from work, and how is it they see work sitting alongside the rest of their lives.
“They don’t talk to me about 1265, they talk to me about flexibility, fluidity, a sense of purpose and accountability, a sense of investment. And I think we’ve got to shift our thinking.”
In reality, most teachers work longer than the 1,265 hours a year. A 2019 report found that teachers work an average of 47 hours a week, with one in four working more than 59 hours.
Last year, government introduced a non-statutory expectation that schools open for a minimum of 32.5 hours a week.
During the conference panel, on teacher development, an audience member suggested education should follow the NHS in “embedded” professional development into its culture.
‘Lack of flexibility is the problem’
Pepe Di’Iasio, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leadership, said he had friends in the health service who work “incredibly long hours, but they do it in service and because it’s part of the commitment that they give because of the way they feel about responsibility for the work that they do.
“And I don’t remember them ever saying to me on a Friday night, when they arrive two hours late for us going out for a drink, that they’ve got to 1267, and that’s them done.
“So I think that there’s a lot to learn from the health service. Some of that’s good, and some that’s bad. But around the professional development, it’s very good, definitely.”
Chris Wheeler, NASUWT union’s head of campaigns, added directed time is “only half the time teachers are working in a given week.
“I absolutely agree that we need to look at the working time of teachers. I’m certain that 1265 isn’t the problem, but flexibility is.
“We come across constantly members, particularly from various underrepresented groups, forced out of full time employment in schools and into the supply sector or out of the profession completely because they can’t access any meaningful flexibility. So we absolutely need to address that issue.”
Boomer-Clark also said government should guarantee funding for the core entitlement of teacher development.
1265 is to prevent teachers from being taken advantage of. The school week does not provide sufficient time to plan and mark. This is all done at home, voluntarily, and is vital for successful lessons.
Flexibility will only be achieved with a greater workforce. To get this we need teaching to be an attractive role.
Ask yourself why she would like to remove the cap? It will result in more meetings and duties. There would be even less time to do the preparation for job and develop teaching practice. As a teacher I need independent time to improve practice, not more meetings.
TLDR: This article is disguised as supporting teachers but is the opposite.
Agreed. Use to work for the AET (conveniently relabelled Lift) and my prior colleagues tell me how they are increasingly being ‘asked’ to do more pointless tasks with very little outcome. Interestingly, I would love to know the retention rate of schools sharing this viewpoint.
Here’s a suggestion, pay teachers an hourly wage. The school opens and closes as normal and you run a clock in clock out system to work out base pay. You then pay an extra 10hrs ‘overtime’ at time and a half for additional work in unsociable hours (evenings and weekends).
I have no issue with the removal of the 1265hrs, but this needs to come with appropriate remuneration.
The average UK employee works ~1700hrs a year (36.6hrs a week for 46.4 weeks of the year assuming the statutory minimum 5.6 weeks annual leave).
The average teacher currently works 52.4hrs a week for 39 weeks (assuming they do nothing over any school holidays which we all know is a fallacy) this equates to 2043hrs per year.
Teachers already work 20% more hours than most other full time professions.
Comparing them to healthcare workers is simply laughable, they don’t do it for service they do it for money. They’re reimbursed for every hour above and beyond 37.5hrs per week. I guarantee if there was no extra pay and they had worked over their required hours you’d be hearing about nothing else for the entire night.
Well said. She is an embarrassment to the profession with views like that.
Frightening that a CEO of a major trust appears to think that teachers only work directed hours. I have never known a primary school teacher stop marking books halfway through a pile or only photocopy half the resources needed for the next day because they have decided to clock off. For a profession where most spend so many hours going above and beyond it is absolutely insulting to suggest that teachers need to be more professional. This CEO is clearly completely out of touch with the professionals who have to work for her. Perhaps she needs to spend more hours working to actually understand the profession she is supposed to be leading?
Couldn’t agree more. Quite insulting that the CEO of a large trust thinks professionals will not see through the disguise. Patronising. Will do nothing to positively impact on the current recruitment and retention crisis!
An enabled clown shooting from the hip.
Definitely the opposite. I am not feeling the support a all
. You’re right. Let’s read between every line.
So if she wants to scrap the 1265 hrs, does that mean she wants to pay us the same salary but lower our hourly rate? Or pay us the same hourly rate and then pay us for he hours we actually do? (Therefore making all schools immediately bankrupt…)
Agree with the comments. To do the job properly as expected primary school teachers need to work on average at least 50 hours a week. This isn’t just teaching. It’s assessment, it’s meetings, it’s dealing with parents, it’s prep for lessons especially many adaptations for all the SEN and less able and then more able children in each lesson, every day, 5 days a week. Then, it’s subject leadership and preparation for deep dives. Finally it’s the sense of fear, worry and guilt if any of the former isn’t done to the expended standard. In a nutshell, we need directed time to reflect the actual job we do and the protection it gives us, it’s ridiculous that we only get paid for 32.5 hours a week.
Great idea. Teachers are running away from the job, insufficient new teachers are coming in. So some overpaid, unnecessary parasite on Education says ‘Let’s make teachers work longer hours’. That should sort the recruitment crisis! You would thin that someone earning as much as her and having all that responsibility would have at least a vague idea about how teaching works.
1265 and time budgets are a broken way of addressing unnecessary demands in the profession. The 1265 cap along with overly prescriptive time budgets are divisive and lead to pettiness. Ultimately, there is no profession where work can be completed in less than 40 to 45 hours per week, and keeping abreast of your professional development is an expectation. We are not factory workers on production lines. A lot of progress is needed to reduce needless workload burden, but 1265 needs looked at!
Would any child suffer if this CEO took a term off? I doubt it. Another MAT leader taking money away from children.
She wants to stop counting hours so that we work more leaving more money for leaches like herself and consultants.
I totally agree with all these comments! It’s difficult to see how a CEO paid a ridiculously high salary for far less hours than a teacher in a class room has any idea of what the job actually requires from a person. Taking away the 1265 hours baseline only does more harm as it leaves an ambiguous standard to meet. At least the ‘1265’ number of hours provides a level of expectation that teachers feel they have met.
Agree with all comments. If we are going to compare teaching to the NHS then let’s make sure we highlight that NHS staff are paid overtime for all hours worked. Teachers work overtime and it’s called ‘good will’. It’s the only profession I’ve ever worked in where you are not paid for the work you do, yet expectations ever increase.
Flexibility is absolutely an issue, as a teacher you expect parents to turn up to events and stress the importance of parental attendance for children, such as awards or sports days or Christmas shows. Yet teachers are not allowed the flexibility to attend their own children’s events and so their children suffer.
Generation z teachers? Are previous teacher generations being dumped? How does working for longer give a sense of purpose that being a teacher fails to?
As for comparing teachers with “friends in the health profession” who will work unstintingly to save lives and make people healthy, it’s doubtful that is a valid comparison given outcomes. What it is though is emotional blackmail exploited by educational leaders since time immemorial.
Hilarious, teachers have always worked far more hours than 1265.
The Conservative government were convinced that teachers were getting away with something, classic projection there. Then fell on their ar’ses when teachers said,”fair enough, I’ll work 1265”. It was the death of clubs at the time. It made teachers look at how many hours they actually work.
I believe the issue is that, post Covid, teachers have realised how much nonsense they actually have to do. That’s why they want flexibility and sensible conversations.
This is closed mindset thinking akin to the ‘Brexit deal’ problem. The issue isn’t the time, it’s the ridiculous expectations. Students results should be just that, students. We need to rethink education, I completely agree, away from the sausage factory model to something more useful to the students and to society. Time for big ideas, not finger pointing.
The hours that you could put into the job of teaching are potentially limitless and many teachers burn out and ship out because the workload is so great (I’m one of them). Removing the cap can only make this worse as far as I can see. I think this woman is being highly disingenuous.
I’ve been in education over 30years and not once had any colleague said to me ‘I’m at 1264 so I canonly do 1hr of that meeting’
Teachers are jaded. They need to be protected (as do our much lesser paid support staff).
What the government needs to do is a review of what these academy trusts are spending on their back office support staff.
I know of one MAT who spends hundreds of thousands of pounds on ‘operations director’ etc etc and has cut ‘front line staff’ .
The CEOs don’t seem to ever have their working team around them cut. They have plenty of people to share the work with.
I say this as a jaded headteacher who has left the profession along with two other HT colleagues and we will never go back.
MAT structure has made it impossible unfortunately, it’s toxic and a blame culture.
And now they want teachers to work more hours????? Or sorry no they want to give teachers “flexibility’.
I find CEOs of Academy chains dangerous to improving state education. They talk about the children come first and then line their own pockets with tax payers money which should be going to children’s education. They want the pay without wanting to take the responsibility. Blame everyone but themselves. Teachers need protection from these people. You can build flexibility without adding more hours. It’s the teachers the government needs to talk to, not CEOs as they very rarely do any teaching.
If I was being paid £220000 a year, as she is, then I would be more inclined to flexibility. As it is I work all directed hours (M6 teacher) and spend an additional 20+ hours at home a week (for free), planning and marking.
This is hilarious. Pay us overtime like nurses, doctors, police officers… and the rest and then talk to us about what it means to be valued as a professional.
That’s it, I am done with this profession. I am constantly on the verge of leaving but this attitude right here is the thing that has made the decision for me. I am not sacrificing myself to exploitation for this job and nor should people in the medical expression. I am resigning tomorrow.
Gen Z are rookies with no family commitments and will change their minds.