Everyone involved in education, from school leaders to teachers; from admin staff to site services, all work toward the same common goal – the future success of our learners. But with so many pressures on our service at the moment it is difficult to achieve this goal while looking after the welfare and work-life balance of the teachers doing the work.
We are fortunate in Northern Ireland to have plenty of school leaders who take teacher welfare seriously, and who come up with imaginative and effective ways to help staff maintain a positive work-life balance.
Hero of the week
The Principal of a school Somewhere In Northern Ireland, next to a sleepy brook and a looming mountain, announced to staff today (10/4/24) that ASOSA was at an end, so directed time would return as normal. They thanked staff for all their hard work during the time of action. However (and many a ‘here we go’ was heard) the Principal had not produced Directed Time Budgets before the start of the year because of the ASOSA, therefore staff were entirely free to use the remaining time between now and the end of term to do self-directed work. Almost as though they were grown-up professional people. Well done that Principal!
Welfare Days
Many members report that their schools are now using at least one of the SDDs allocated to them as a welfare day, doing activities to help improve staff wellbeing. While this is part of the wider instructions about welfare, it’s good to see schools engage with the process.
Doing things differently
A school has chosen to redesign how they do everything with astonishing results. By modifying the distribution of hours to staff and by running a bespoke curriculum, they have been able to give teachers around 19 hours of detailed, research-based, lesson preparation per week. On top of that, teachers get around 5 hours of cross-curricular cooperation time, allowing staff to become some of the highest trained teaching professionals out there, socially comparable to doctors.
Contact time has been reduced to approximately 12-14 hours a week, meaning there is close to 1.4 hours preparation for each hour of delivery. This gives the facility for more dynamic, responsive, and meticulously planned lessons, better able to serve the needs of every member of the class. The results are consistently among the highest in the world, and the school’s system is considered the gold standard in how to effectively educate young people and build a successful, educated, society.
Of course this school is in Finland.
Not getting trampled underfoot
A primary school closes at 2pm one day a week to facilitate PPA time for all staff. When the hundreds of little kittens are away, the mice can… prepare for them coming back the next day.
Nativity!
Another primary school has moved all school productions, such as Christmas plays, to within the school day, and offers more than one showing to facilitate parents and families to attend. While Shepherds watched their union communications by night…
Yes, you shall go to the ball!
An SLD school has an internal policy to always facilitate staff attending their children’s play, and allow early release during the day to attend parents’ afternoon. Family friendly fun!
Let’s figure this out ourselves.
A school has established their own focus groups and working parties, including managers, union reps, and other stakeholders, in order to collaboratively identify and address workload issues. They asked “can somebody not fix this?” then realised “we are somebody.”
If Carlsberg did Time Budgets
The same school is setting up meetings between the Principal and all staff individually, to finally produce properly worked out time budgets. This kind of nonsense will put us out of a campaign!
More than yoga and buns
A different school in the same area has developed an effective well-being policy in consultation with all staff, which actually supports staff well-being rather than ticks boxes.
Staff well-being in the school development plan
A school has a staff well-being working group as one of the four main strands of their proposed school development strategy. They meet regularly and work to ensure staff well-being is central to how the school grows in the future. It’s good to see a leadership team who understand that exhausted teachers can’t build a better school.
At a place of your choosing
Several schools in Northern Ireland have locally agreed with staff that if staff are not required for cover on a given day, they can do their non-contact PPA periods where they like – including at home. The only stipulation is that they haven’t been pulled for cover that morning, otherwise staff have the autonomy to carry out their duties where they like. You know, as though they were professional adults.
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