Many schools are struggling with both retention and recruitment issues. According to a 2017 National Audit Office report, schools were able to fill just half of their vacancies with teachers possessing the experience and expertise they required. In around a tenth of all cases, schools failed to fill said posts at all.
However, there may be a way for SLTs to improve staff relations and potentially retain their highly motivated teachers. Flexible working conditions, with offers such as job shares, can provide teachers with opportunities to continue their teaching careers without forfeiting a healthy work-life balance.
Flexi is a service recently launched by the supply teaching agency justteachers that matches two like-minded teachers to one full-time role. Dahlia Al-Sarraj was among the Flexi candidates placed earlier this year,. Having worked for three years as a full-time primary teacher, just like 81% of the teachers responding to the aforementioned NEU workload survey, she had contemplated leaving the profession altogether – largely due to an unsustainable workload, long hours and poor work-life balance. Yet Dahlia is now working three days per week, sharing a key stage 2 class with another colleague, and credits her Flexi job share role with keeping her in the profession.
“When I was working full-time I was working extremely long hours. I’d leave the house at 7.30am and get home at 7.00pm – it was just not sustainable at all,” Dahlia recalls. “I also felt like I didn’t see my family for a very long time. I was always doing extra work on weeknights and at the weekends. I did consider leaving the profession, but then the opportunity arose for me to take on the Flexi job share and I’ve fallen back in love with teaching. It’s changed my mind completely.”
Another advantage of job sharing is that it enables teachers to work collaboratively. “My job share partner and I both have similar teaching styles, so the children still have that continuity throughout the week which has helped them settle quite quickly to being taught by both of us,” she says.
“We keep in contact through email and text, and also have a contact book.
Anything noteworthy that happens on my days, such as communication with parents or incidents in class, I’ll write in the book and vice versa. There’s constant and ongoing communication between the two of us.
“It’s important to be open-minded. We’re both very open to other ideas – if I go back on one of my teaching days and there’s a note that seating plans have been changed, that’s absolutely fine. Being open to change is really important, and it also shows the children that we’re working together as one.”
Now six months into her Flexi role, Dahlia has become a strong advocate of the job share approach. “The way teaching is going, I think this is going to be the way forward,” she says. “It’s just not sustainable for one person to take a class with the amount of work that needs to be done. There aren’t that many part-time teachers at the moment, but I think in future we’ll see a lot more.”
Caroline Cafferty is operations director at justteachers
