Teachers working from home

I’m not really sure WFH can work at all for most mainstreams schools.

I know my daughter often brings home work, she’s an infant teacher, so things must be so much worse in Juniors and Secondary Schools.

If teaching were such an attractive career that there were queues of people wanting to do it, and if all schools had enough funding to pay for an abundance of enthusiastic staff, perhaps a teacher's day could be structured so that half of them worked in a classroom mornings and at home doing preparation and other paperwork in the afternoons, and the other half worked at home in the mornings and at the school in the afternoons. Their evenings and weekends could be genuine leisure time. Dream on.

Elegran

If teaching were such an attractive career that there were queues of people wanting to do it, and if all schools had enough funding to pay for an abundance of enthusiastic staff, perhaps a teacher's day could be structured so that half of them worked in a classroom mornings and at home doing preparation and other paperwork in the afternoons, and the other half worked at home in the mornings and at the school in the afternoons. Their evenings and weekends could be genuine leisure time. Dream on.

👏👏👏

I always worked from home in the evenings and weekends. I had hardly any leisure time, due to my workload. It broke my health in the end.
The L.A doctor, who saw me, could not believe the hours I had been working.

My dd has given up being a teacher after 18 years due to working all hours. She now does SENCO one day a week and has set up her own business to do various neurodivergent assessments for which she has qualified and which are well paid. She will finally get a life. She has got out before she gets too stressed and her health suffers which it was starting to do. Marydoll I fully understand.

I never understand why people not in the workplace of the people concerned are bothered about others working from home. If the Head can manage the situation so all the classes are covered, work is prepared and marked and children are not left alone, that's what matters.

Things are very different from how they used to be, and I wonder if that is the crux of the matter - those who left the workplace some time ago maybe struggle to understand that.

Being able to log into a work system from anywhere means that 'presenteeism' is no longer necessary. That doesn't meant that people are skiving. If they want to go to their child's Nativity and they are not teaching at the time, why not? The marking or preparation that might have otherwise happened on school premises can just as easily be done in the evening or on Saturday. It a bit of flexibility helps to retain teachers, why do other people care?

There has to be some attempt to make teaching a more attractive career, especially to those who have a family. We cannot continue with the current situation and I for one applaud any attempt to boost teacher numbers and to give teachers job satisfaction rather than being frantically under stress all the time. As things are, no-one is going to feel attracted to teaching.

If some of the prep/marking time can be incorporated into working hours by doing this at home where a mother can be on the premises for her children, this has to be a good thing. The logistics will not be easy, but nowhere in the proposals does it say it will be easy.

I found that the fact that I was highly qualified in a number of areas, meant that the HT kept adding to my load. He refused to listen.
Few were interested in obtaining qualifications.

It's one career I never wanted, even though I had the qualifications to do a PGCE and a few teachers I had were encouraging me to do this. Even in the nineties, teachers were leaving because of stress and schools that tended to have vacancies for teachers were ones in inner cities. Somehow trying to teach a group of disinterested and aggressive 15 and 16 years in a school in Hackney was something I didn't want.

Doodledog

I never understand why people not in the workplace of the people concerned are bothered about others working from home. If the Head can manage the situation so all the classes are covered, work is prepared and marked and children are not left alone, that's what matters.

Things are very different from how they used to be, and I wonder if that is the crux of the matter - those who left the workplace some time ago maybe struggle to understand that.

Being able to log into a work system from anywhere means that 'presenteeism' is no longer necessary. That doesn't meant that people are skiving. If they want to go to their child's Nativity and they are not teaching at the time, why not? The marking or preparation that might have otherwise happened on school premises can just as easily be done in the evening or on Saturday. It a bit of flexibility helps to retain teachers, why do other people care?

Well said!!

As others have said, teachers already do part of their work at home and always have. What "teacher working from home" suggests to me is that the person is teaching from home online, which is different.

. Yes Baggs, that is exactly what I thought.
I always did marking, preparation etc from home if I could because the heating went off promptly at 3.30pm and the classrooms very quickly became freezing cold.
I have noticed that quite a few secondary schools seem to send the pupils home by mid-day on a Friday, presumably so the staff can have their Planning. Preparation and Assessment time together, saving on cover . I believe the school day starts earlier to make up the time.

I do appreciate that teachers work long hours especially evenings and weekends. But (and this is a serious question) don’t the long holidays make up for this?

Skydancer

I do appreciate that teachers work long hours especially evenings and weekends. But (and this is a serious question) don’t the long holidays make up for this?

No. Part of the holidays is usually taken up with planning ahead, or catching up with what couldn't be done on the paperwork side during the term..

Skydancer

I do appreciate that teachers work long hours especially evenings and weekends. But (and this is a serious question) don’t the long holidays make up for this?

I used to spend half my summer holidays in school, taking delivery of IT equipment, setting up new IT systems, auditing what we had in terms of hardware, software, timetabling, writing programmes for the following year etc.etc. Furthermore, I rarely had a lunch break, was out in the playground at 8.40am in all weathers, speaking to parents and ensuring the safety of pupils.
The rest of the holiday time, I reckoned made up for my lost weekends and social life.

The doctor, who deemed me permanently unfit to work, sussed out that I was doing at least double what I was contracted to do. I was entitled to no-contact time, to allow for management duties, I rarely got it, because we were always short staffed and short of money.
Always empty promises.

Some may say, that was my choice to do so, but if I didn't I would be working in a total muddle, to the detriment of my pupils. On top of that there was the pressure from senior management to keep on top of things. I often felt I was on a treadmill.

Unless you have lived that life, you have no conception of what is involved.

Baggs

As others have said, teachers already do part of their work at home and always have. What "teacher working from home" suggests to me is that the person is teaching from home online, which is different.

I doubt it, unless the teacher only has sixth form classes - younger children would need to be supervised. I've never taught in a school, but don't even sixth formers need to have an adult in the room?

'Working from home' in this case probably means formalising the work that is already done, and counting it in the weekly hours worked, rather than assuming that teachers will do it in their own time out of good will - so might involve coming in late if there are no classes in the morning, and/or leaving early if the last class is over. Whether the teacher goes home to mark or to go to a Nativity play (or to get a haircut) shouldn't matter, so long as the work is done before the next class.

I am pretty sure it means marking and preparation at home. There can be subtle (or not so subtle) pressures to put in a long day at school and if the emphasis shifts from working in your empty classroom to working at home, that is good news.

The problem is that most of the paperwork needs to be done during term time; marking particularly, reports, assessments, day to day planning and preparation. Planning can be done in peace and quiet of the holidays but the curriculum is interfered with changed regularly, so it was starting from scratch each year. It is obvious children being 'home-educated ' will now have to be checked on, and that will be passed to the schools to implement.
I am retired now, but I would willingly have sacrificed some holiday for the regular compulsory training courses on new initiatives , rather than the end of a busy school day, with 32 times 3 sets of books waiting to be marked before next day.
Most staff are in school by 8am and rarely leave before 6pm, with work to do at home, a great deal of it unnecessary form filling and writing different comments in green, pink and blue pens(never red which apparently made pupils feel threatened.)
I loved teaching but the ever increasing bureaucracy is draining the pleasure out of it.

In Primary schools PPA time is usually taken in a half day block. It can’t be in blocks of less than an hour.

Currently the ability to work from home is at the Head’s discretion. The class would already be covered.
Some schools have teachers who teach a foreign language to cover the class teacher’s PPA, others employ Sports coaches. HLTAs
( Higher Level Teaching Assistants) cover classes in some schools.

In a Primary School all of the available space is usually taken up and there would be nowhere to work undisturbed. Teachers can be found working in staff rooms where there may be activities with children going on or others having meetings.
Whist in school a teacher might need to go back in class, to support with a child for example.

Working from home is far more productive and enables a period of uninterrupted time to get on with elements of a heavy stressful workload. Of course teachers work from home evenings and weekends too.
Retired teacher and current Governor

When I was an LA inspector, we monitored home education, but don't know if that still happens eazybee.
When I started teaching in the seventies people would rock up five minutes before the bell, go home at lunchtime and leave when the bell rang at 4pm. Unthinkable now. I also remember people knitting in staff meetings.

Doodledog

I never understand why people not in the workplace of the people concerned are bothered about others working from home. If the Head can manage the situation so all the classes are covered, work is prepared and marked and children are not left alone, that's what matters.

Things are very different from how they used to be, and I wonder if that is the crux of the matter - those who left the workplace some time ago maybe struggle to understand that.

Being able to log into a work system from anywhere means that 'presenteeism' is no longer necessary. That doesn't meant that people are skiving. If they want to go to their child's Nativity and they are not teaching at the time, why not? The marking or preparation that might have otherwise happened on school premises can just as easily be done in the evening or on Saturday. It a bit of flexibility helps to retain teachers, why do other people care?

I am not opposed to the idea in principle, but I’d like to know how it can be made to work, without spending more money to employ more staff to be in school whilst teachers are WFH. There are a lot of ‘ifs’ in your first paragraph.
And how to still get everything done in the time available. Even better, how to reduce the amount of time teachers need to work weekends, evenings and in the holidays.

Possibly allowing more part-time or job share posts might help, but we have many part-time GPs and whilst that helps the individuals’ work-life balance, it doesn’t help to cover the actual workload. It is just not possible to magic up more GPs, nor can more teachers appear out of nowhere, though if this scheme helps to retain more, that will help.
Those who have retired from teaching are well placed to know how demanding the job is, and I don’t doubt that the demands and expectations continue to increase.

Not going to work in Early Years classrooms, is it?!
My four, the children of two teachers, and nephew and nieces of teachers were clear that it's the one job they would not do, and they have stayed true to their word.
Retention of teachers is a significant problem- many leave in the first few years, never to return.

Knitting in staff meetings sounds fine to me. /you can still listen while knitting.

I read while knitting too, so long as it's plain knitting.

Baggs

Knitting in staff meetings sounds fine to me. /you can still listen while knitting.

I read while knitting too, so long as it's plain knitting.

Knitting would never be tolerated in my former school. No-one would dare.
Times have changed.