As a teacher who already works four days (albeit I don’t get paid for the fifth), I can wholeheartedly say it has transformed my relationship with the job (‘Bring it on!’: growing support in England for four-day week in schools, 9 December). I no longer have the dread of weekends and holidays with insurmountable mountains of work. The move to a four-day teaching week would need to be thought about carefully.
I, for one, would not want to have one full day out of school – this would mean four straight days of teaching. In most schools, a day not teaching would equate to five planning, preparation and assessment periods (PPAs).
I think most full-time teachers would rather this was spread across five days, with the option of blocking an afternoon where they could leave the building. Flexibility in teaching needs to be about giving teachers a choice. Five PPAs is hardly radical ideology – it was the norm when I started teaching in 2007.
Peter Russell
Sheffield
• Flexible working for teachers has clear benefits, but it cannot solve the fundamental issue: schools are underresourced and workloads are extensive. Within current time requirements, a four-day week is not deliverable. Compressing teaching hours would only intensify pressure, limit schools’ ability to cover staff absence and increase reliance on supply or cover supervisors, to the detriment of pupils.
Rather than a blanket four-day week, the priority for the government should be reducing workload (including through streamlined accountability), improving resourcing and embedding genuinely healthy flexible-working practices across the sector.
Antonia Spinks
Chief executive, Pioneer Educational Trust
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