Part-time working: Making it work

Ensuring there are enough high-quality teachers in the sector is crucial for delivering a first-class education for young people.

However, as the number of secondary pupils is forecast to increase by 19 per cent over the next decade, attracting and retaining enough secondary teachers is a key challenge facing school leaders today.

A recent report by the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) looking at teacher retention highlights that increasing part-time and flexible working opportunities for teachers is likely to encourage more teachers to stay in the profession (Teacher workforce dynamics in England, October 2018).

The prospect of large numbers of full-time teachers moving to part-time can on its own present a risk to teacher supply – for example, a Guardian article last year suggested that if 40 per cent of teachers go down to four days a week, we would need another 40,000 extra people to replace them. However, our research evidence leads us to think there are important reasons to be more positive about the overall effects of more part-time working.