By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss
Robert Frost
and work twelve hours a day.
Twilight sessions have become popular with school management over the last number of years. The operating principles of a twilight session is that a school principal will often seek to ‘trade’ teacher time swapping a duration of time (after normal school hours) for a duration of time during what would otherwise be another school day.
As teachers, we know that some parts of the school academic year are hectic with staff activity, whereas some other parts of the school year can be less intense, such as just before school breaks up for the holidays.
Ordinarily a Principal will seek to trade an extra portion of time during a busy period for some time when teachers would be much less busy.
The Principal will normally request that teaching staff “stay behind” for an hour and a half or 2 hours at the end of the school day in lieu of teaching staff not having to attend school for a morning or afternoon session at a much less busy time of the year (possibly where there would be no pupils in attendance anyway). Principals will seek to trade 2 twilight sessions in lieu of a whole school day near the end of term.
A popular time for Principals to seek twilight sessions are during the start or middle of the first or second term.
The school management will normally seek to allocate tasks to twilight sessions that staff would simply wouldn’t be able to fit into their busy teaching day because of their teaching, pastoral and lesson PPA commitments.
Common tasks that school managements will seek to allocate to twilight sessions are:
- Preparation and uploading information to individual education plans (IEPs) for students on the SEN register.
- Preparing and evaluating action plans (departmental or curriculum area).
- Another task that the management is finding it difficult to accommodate on the school calendar.
There are pros and cons with twilight sessions.
Pros – teachers don’t have flexible working, so having a day can be useful for a teacher to plan to do tasks which are otherwise unavailable to them, such as getting to the bank etc. Some teachers also take the view that they are probably going to be ‘expected’ to have to complete the tasks in anycase and they might as well have the time in lieu for completing the extra work.
Cons – teachers with childcare responsibilities will have to make alternative childcare arrangements for their own children. This might be difficult or inconvenient to arrange or possibly even involve paying someone. This could be an equality issue.
Because twilight sessions are generally organised during busy parts of the school year, teachers are often physically and emotionally drained by the time 3.30pm comes around. Starting into an extra session of intensive work will obviously affect their well-being, and the quality of the work will be lower because of this tiredness. Some teachers may well prefer to avoid the twilight session, and rather attend in school on a much less onerous day when they can get caught up with tasks which are difficult or impossible to undertake during busy teaching phases.
Twilight sessions are not obligatory, and staff can avoid them as long as they attend the trade-in “in lieu” day.
Twilight sessions are not obligatory, so the school management will often seek to ‘negotiate’ these with staff to obtain a consensus. As they cannot be enforced on staff members, individual staff members are at liberty to refuse to participate in twilight sessions. In this scenario the school can ask the member to attend during the ‘in lieu’ day.
The union position on twilight sessions
Unions do not endorse members participating in twilight sessions, regardless of this, the reality is that many schools run these twilight sessions.
Case study – Twilights – what should I do?
My Principal held a staff meeting to discuss the staff calendar. The Principal suggested 2 after school ‘twilight’ sessions to be used to complete IEPs, and in exchange staff could finish one day early at the end of term.
My problem is that I normally collect my own children after school and I have no alternative arrangements. My own family don’t live near me so I cannot ask them to look after the children.
Response – It would seem that you are simply not available to do the twilight sessions. Contact your school union representative and explain that you are not available to do the twilight sessions. You do not have to explain to the school rep or the principal why you are not available you can simply say you have domestic commitments.
You can ask the rep to explain this to the Principal or you may choose to do this yourself. You might suggest to the Principal that you will complete the work set for the twilight during your own personal time and that you will finish term early in line with the rest of the staff. Your Principal may be amenable to this suggestion as you are making the time up from your own time.
If the Principal insists that you attend when the rest of the teaching staff are off on the last day of term then you should agree to this and agree to complete the IEPs at this time.
If the Principal insists that you must have the IEPs completed long before the last day of term, then you or the Rep will explain to the Principal that since the twilight session didn’t fit within a normal directed time budget (ie one without twilight sessions), then she has accepted that the work cannot be completed within a teachers directed time. If the Principal wants the work completed within schedule then she must release you for your teaching timetable for a day or 2 half days to complete the work.
The Principal has a choice of allowing you to complete the tasks in your own time and finish term a day early, or alternatively insist you come in the last day of term and pay for a substitute to free you for two half days to complete the work.
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