Schools have always been dependent on a voluntary commitment from teachers beyond the legal minimum requirement.
TNC 2020/1 FAQ Q14 (bold added.)
Extra-curricular activities are the enrichment offerings that schools often depend upon as their Unique Selling Point (USP.) Think of some of the big School’s Cup schools – RBAI, Methody, Campbell College, Ballymena Academy – and how important their extra-curricular activities are to their recruitment.
Extra-curricular activities are extremely valuable to schools.
But unless a teacher has a separate contract to deliver extra-curricular activities (such as a separate “Director of Hockey” contract or similar) they are entirely voluntary. You will not get paid, either in money or in kind, for participation in extra-curricular activities.
However, “voluntary” means you cannot be directed (either by a senior leader specifically, or as part of a school policy,) to participate in these activities, unless you have time for these added to your directed time budget.
If you are directed to take on an extra-curricular activity, for example after-school revision classes or similar, these hours must be on the Directed Time Budget. Additionally they count as contact time and therefore add to your weekly contact time. So if you are already on class contact (including potential cover) for 23 hours on a given week in a post-primary, and are then instructed to take a 1 hour revision class that week, you would be doing 24 hours contact time that week – which is a breach of your terms and conditions.
Case study – an Inspector (of time budgets) calls
Ms Peregrine is a drama teacher in a post-primary school, part of a large and widely acclaimed drama department. She has a normal contact timetable of 22 hours per week, but is directed to take on responsibility for a school play. This play takes place in the spring term, and is a big USP for the school with local press and sometimes even BBC NI running features on the performance.
On the weeks leading up to the performance Ms Peregrine is tasked to run ten weeks of rehearsals on the Tuesday after school, each lasting 3 hours. This brings her contact time up to 25 hours for these weeks, and is therefore in breach of her terms and conditions, as well as adding 30 hours to her DTB.
On the week of the performance she is tasked to run two more dress rehearsals on the Tuesday and Wednesday evenings (6 hours in total), and then run the actual show on the Friday evening from 7pm to 9pm, with preparation for students from 5pm on the night. Since school finishes at 3.30pm, Ms Peregrine decides not to go home on the Friday, but to stay in work until the children arrive.
Therefore on the week of the performance she is asked to do an additional 10 hours contact time, plus 1.5 hours “trapped time”. This makes her contact time for that week exceed 32 hours – which is far above the maximum amount. Additionally, so far the play has cost her 41.5 hours additional time which needs to be on the time budget, along with additional time for preparation and administration of the play.
Solution – a “Best Practice” Principal would facilitate Ms Peregrine carrying out this important school function by providing dedicated sub cover (preferably from a subject specialist) for the 11 weeks of the play preparation, returning the extra time to Ms Peregrine in that way. An exceptional Best Practice Principal would make sure this cover happens after midday one day a week, so Ms Peregrine could go home and rest. Alternatively, she could have one day off completely every fortnight, with an additional day off on the week of the performance and the week following it.
Flexibility and consideration for welfare and work-life balance is key.
The same is true for trips, albeit with a specific caveat.
“5.3 Principals cannot direct Teachers to take pupils on educational visits involving overnight stays. Where this takes place on a voluntary basis it is a matter of negotiation between the Teacher and the Principal as to the amount of directed time which will be allocated to this activity out of the annual time budget. This should include an appropriate allocation of time for the organisation of such visits.” TNC 2024/2
Trade Unions advise members not to take part in extra-curricular trips.
This is because the burden of responsibility upon teachers for the welfare of their students on such trips is so high, and it is increasingly difficult to defend teachers against failure of duty of care allegations.
However, TNC 2024/2 section 5.3 (above) clearly opens the door to positive discussions with Principals about extra-curricular activities, in order to recoup some of the time invested in these activities as time in the DTB. These would be discussions based on reciprocal goodwill rather than clear points of law, but allow school leaders to develop a Best Practice approach to the extra-curricular life of their school.
Christmas break in…
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