Making flexible working a reality

At the top of this page, you’ll find OpenSource videos introducing our flexible working initiative.

Our nine-day fortnight is the latest step in our continued commitment to flexibility and managing workload. Below, you can explore some of the initiatives we’ve had in place for some time to support our team’s wellbeing and create a positive, sustainable working environment.

• Whole class feedback: we are attentive to student outcomes, and as a result, we provide feedback that is often deliverable from the whole class or as part of adaptions to planning or to the curricular map.   
• Behaviour management: we have a highly consistent behaviour management approach across our trust that builds supportive mechanisms around children and adults.

  Cross cutting teams: we have a central curriculum and we collaborate across schools and departments to ensure we share resources and stop duplication and unnecessary work at all levels. 

• Limiting our meetings: we always limit the amount of meetings that our staff are in. We don’t want to waste any of their time and we expect them to tell us and feed back if they feel they could save time elsewhere. 

In line with our deep commitment to self-determination, we want to give our teachers more agency over their roles by finding ways to give them more time back.

• Nine-day fortnight: the nine-day fortnight does not impact student contact time.
   
• Remote working: we offer remote working during non-contact time, which includes giving more PPA and making it manageable from home or another remote location, and where our teachers want to do this, compressing the free hours or non-contact hours so that they can be away from school for longer periods of time.  
   
• Personal days: we offer personal days during term time so our teachers are not restricted to only take time off in the school holidays.  
   
• Artificial intelligence: we are looking at technology, where possible, to reduce teachers’ contact time and provide greater flexibility. We want to harness technology more widely to free up more time and allow our best teachers to influence more students than just those physically present in their classrooms.