Recruitment & retention: Education secretary Damian Hinds urges schools to adopt flexible working and reveals his plan to let non-teachers ‘have a go’ in the classroom to see if teaching is the right career for them. Chris Parr reports

Schools must do more to make flexible working options available to teachers and school leaders, the education secretary has said.

He has also revealed plans to allow non-teachers to “have a go” at teaching in a bid to boost recruitment rates.

Speaking at the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) annual conference in Birmingham last week, Damian Hinds said that proportion of teachers working part-time was smaller than the population as a whole – and that this needed to change.

“As people’s working patterns change, so it is increasingly important that schools are able to adapt their working practices so that teachers are able to have the greater flexibility that is becoming more and more important throughout our country,” he told an audience of about 1,000 school leaders.

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