News

Teacher retention strategies: A nine-day working week and PPA time off-site?

Flexible working Teaching staff
The potential of a nine-day working fortnight and taking PPA time off-site is to be investigated in a bid to boost teacher retention levels.
Image: Adobe Stock - Adobe Stock

Research has been commissioned by the Education Endowment Foundation as part of its focus on the impact of flexible working practices in schools.

The first project is to be led by the Ambition Institute and will focus on whether a nine-day working fortnight – where staff have an extra day off once a fortnight – can improve teacher retention.

This project is to work with Dixons Academies Trust, which moved to a nine-day working fortnight at the start of this school year across its 17 schools.

Moving to a nine-day fortnight would involve changing teachers’ contractual working hours and the first phase of the research will include interviews with leaders and teachers to understand the benefits and challenges of the approach.

The project is to explore in which schools it is feasible to implement a nine-day fortnight, identify the costs involved for schools, and consider challenges and lessons learned.

Researchers from the Institute of Education UCL and the Chartered College of Teaching, meanwhile, are to explore the impact on teacher retention when schools encourage teachers’ planning, preparation, and assessment (PPA) time to be taken off-site rather than on the premises.

Teachers get at least 10% of their time for PPA work – more for early career teachers – but this is usually undertaken at school. The research project will consider what would happen if we give teachers the option to spend this time remotely and ensure school timetables enable this flexibility.

This project will be conducted across a number of primary schools and will consider “barriers and enablers” for this approach and the impact it might have on teacher wellbeing and job satisfaction, as well as “any potential implications on teaching quality and pupil learning”.

The EEF has also commissioned a third project to be led by research organisation Teacher Tapp and focused on teacher recruitment. The project will use the Teacher Tapp app to identify strategies that are likely to be effective in attracting teachers to schools with high levels of socio-economic disadvantage.

The latest government figures show that 39,971 teachers quit the chalkface for reasons other than retirement in 2022/23 – or 8.8% of the workforce. Likewise, 39,597 quit in 2021/22.

Commenting on the new research projects, Emily Yeomans, co-chief executive at EEF, said: “There is no denying that recruitment and retention is one of the biggest issues currently facing the English school system. This is why we have made it one of our flagship research themes, reflecting the important role it has in improving our education system.

“We cannot hope to close the attainment gap without addressing the recruitment and retention crisis too. The launch of these projects should help us to build a far better picture of how important flexible working is to a supported, motivated teaching workforce who are more likely to stay in the profession. We look forward to seeing the initial results of these projects next year.”