Boarding School's Association: Flexible working in schools

Now here’s an irony: what’s the betting that most parents who are crying out for flexible working will be horrified if teachers had similar flexibility?

Most parents want flexibility to spend more time with their children or to have time to take the children to school and collect them at the end of the school day. What they don’t want is to take the children to school and find there is no one there – because the teacher is off taking his or her own child to another school.

The government, looking for ‘wrap-around care’ in schools which are virtually open all hours, from 8 in the morning with breakfast to 6 at night and probably supper, seems to expect that schools will be part of the care regime, so that parents can deliver and collect children but still do a full working day.

But how will it all work if teachers too are picking and choosing their hours for the 16 years even one child would need if the latest headlines are to be believed?

Given the dangers on our streets, given the risks children run even when they think they have reached years of discretion – ‘I’m 14 and I’m not having a baby-sitter!’ – I can understand the sense of allowing parents more time to really look after their children, for 16 years if necessary.

But parents also expect that the great teacher their child has for a particular subject in senior school or a particular year in primary school will be there when the child needs the lessons. Pity the Headteacher with the great staff who suddenly finds himself explaining to parents why a wonder-teacher is available for only half the week, or can’t do mornings any more, and actually, there weren’t many applications and the best of the bunch was a supply teacher who has been before and wasn’t brilliant, but hey, what is an employer to do?

Perhaps the generation of parents currently leaving children under a year old in nurseries all week will see the sense of sending older children to boarding schools, where there really is ‘wrap-around care’ plus great facilities, and fun and friendship for their children. And quite likely a little more continuity than may soon be available in most schools.


Hilary Moriarty
National Director
Boarding Schools' Association
www.boarding.org.uk

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