Working at home

“Those who get angry when you set a boundary are the ones you need to set boundaries for.”

J.S. Wolfe

The Jordanstown Agreement of 1987 (and subsequent amendments) states:

“b) A teacher… shall be available to perform such duties at such times and such places as may reasonably be specified by the Principal… for 1,265 hours in any year exclusive of time spent off school premises in preparing and marking lessons and time spent travelling to and from the place of work;” (Bold added.)

In one of the finest contemporary examples of “I sense there’s a ‘but’ coming”, this line trickles through teaching workload negotiations like a toxic stream through a fairy wood. It is the cause of much confusion and – unfortunately – much justification for exploitative workloads by poor leaders. On one side it ties down teaching working hours to the 1265 hours of directed time that Principals are able to direct teachers to do (yay!), which was a vast improvement on the completely open-ended job arrangements which existed before. On the other hand, though, the clause “exclusive of time spent off school premises in preparing and marking lessons” left a yawning backdoor for poor employers to wander into teachers’ free time and demand additional, unpaid, work. (Boo!)

One of the most positive things union members reported about ASOSA was being able to leave their work in the classroom at the end of the day.

This “unpaid PPA from home” has remained one of the most contentious issues in workload negotiations since Jordanstown was signed, but successive workload agreements since 1988, including the most recent (TNC 2024/2), have incrementally reduced access to that backdoor into teachers’ private lives outside of school. While this is still somewhat open-ended, and the employer side is unlikely to ever close this backdoor permanently, this page guides you through some important principles which will help you to set boundaries in your own working life while ensuring your school puts the welfare of staff at the top priority in their planning.

We need to start talking about these things in our staff rooms, in our homes, and in our discussions with school leaders, so here are some detailed talking points to help us get our points across!

1. Working from home is a welfare issue

TNC 2011/1 (the Strategy for Teacher Health & Wellbeing in Northern Ireland) sets out a broad set of principles about maintaining and improving teacher health and wellbeing in NI. Central to this is managing workload, and central to that is proper implementation of time budgeting. This is at the core of our latest agreement, TNC 2024/2.

Simply put, expecting teachers to work (unpaid) at home in their free time cannot fail but have an impact on their work-life balance, which consequently will have a negative impact on their welfare. As opposed to “wellbeing”, which can be more a more fluffy term, “welfare” has meaning under Health and Safety legislation.

“Employers have a general duty under Section 2 of the Health and Safety at Work (NI) Order 1976 to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare of their employees at work…”

This means that Principals and Boards of Governors can be held legally responsible for a failure to properly manage staff workload in their school.

This is recognised and agreed by all sides within TNC 2024/2, section 1.2.7:

“The health and well-being of Teachers is a prime concern for all involved in the education process. It is recognised by this agreement that purposeful work to promote Teachers’ health and welfare must be sustained to the greatest effect possible.”

Put simply, if a school depends on teachers working in their free time in order to get all the tasks they need completed, and this additional workload impacts staff welfare, then the leadership of that school becomes vulnerable to legal action on Health and Safety grounds. Therefore it is in the interests of everyone within the school community to reduce – or, wherever possible, eliminate – workload outside of school hours.

2. All sides agree that working from home is not satisfactory

While the open-ended nature of teachers’ contracts in Northern Ireland remains, the “mood music” from all sides has changed regarding this. The following clauses from TNC 2024/2 could barely be clearer:

Furthermore, TNC 2024/2 (5.7) clearly states that the workload agreement provides a framework “to ensure the allocation and distribution of duties is managed in a fair and reasonable manner that enables Teachers to observe their contractual requirements with sufficient time to enjoy a reasonable work/life balance.“

3. Good schools should develop good working practices

Everyone, from school leaders to school teachers, want to be part of an outstanding school. Yet the journey to outstanding requires hundreds of incremental developmental changes, from the massive to the minute, and central to this is identifying and stopping bad practice.

Depending on the unpaid labour of staff working in evenings and weekends to fulfil the core functions of the school is bad practice.

For decades the open-ended nature of teaching contracts meant that teachers assumed they would have to work evenings and weekends to prepare for their daily lessons. Unpaid. This custom was reflected in the Jordanstown Agreement, and while subsequent TNC agreements have highlighted and addressed the problems with this approach, teachers are still far too willing to accept this abnormal working pattern as normal. But the impact of this “normal” expectation upon teachers is truly shocking.

(Quotes above from “Not Waiting For Superman” blog.)

No school can be “outstanding” if their staff feel like this, so it makes clear business sense for good school leaders to do all they can to ensure that staff can effectively discharge their responsibilities within normal school working hours. Well-rested and happy staff, enjoying a positive work-life balance, will be better positioned to facilitate top class teaching and learning within their school. Good leaders recognise that, and are willing to replace the bad practices of the past with welfare-focused, staff-friendly, positive working practices fit for the 21st century.

There is a similar situation in medicine. While medical veterans often talk of the 36 / 48 hours they used to work when they were junior doctors, as though this was a rite of passage they were proud to survive, they rarely mention the patients who died because of poor treatment decisions by exhausted staff.

“We’ve always done it this way” is no excuse for not doing things better.

4. 10% PPA during working hours exists to reduce or eliminate PPA work at home.

Since 2020 the aspiration for all teaching staff to have 10% of their 1265 contracted hours (126.5 hours per year) ringfenced to allow PPA during normal working hours became a right. This was a direct response by the Teachers’ Negotiating Committee to the negative impact of working on planning, preparation and assessment at home, and is recognition of the harm that excessive work outside of school does to teachers.

In Principal’s training on Directed Time budgets school leaders are instructed to “ensure that a teacher’s PPA time is not eroded by demands and should be kept available for teachers to individually prepare, work, plan, mark and meet collaboratively with their colleagues.” Again, this is a clear direction to facilitate as much PPA taking place in work hours rather than to force teachers to pick up the slack in their own time.

Excluding “time spent off school premises in preparing and marking lessons” from Directed Time also means that school leaders cannot direct teachers to engage in school work during this time.

Whether or not a teacher chooses to spend time preparing and marking lessons outside of school hours is up to that individual teacher, and they cannot be directed to do this. If a school leader directs a teacher to do this, then that direction must be accounted for within the 1265 hours of directed time.

However, poor leaders can indirectly force teachers to work outside of their contractual 1265 hours. This can be through eroding their 10% PPA time (such as requiring complex periodic marking such as coursework to be done without additional time being provided for this,) which takes that time away from its main purpose. Or by failing to properly time budget for the roles and responsibilities of that teacher. For example, giving a Head of Department an hour a week to manage a role which needs four hours a week, steals three hours of their PPA time. This, then, has a knock-on effect on the rest of their Directed Time Budget, which typically means the teacher will try and cover the shortfall through additional work at home.

If a school leader fails to time budget correctly for a staff member’s roles and responsibilities, staff members must not fill the gaps in their own time. Instead the staff member should record all hours spent on their tasks in their planner, inform their line manager / Principal when these hours are running short, and then stop doing that task when their budgeted hours for it are exhausted. (NB: do not do this without first consulting your trade union for support and advice.)

The situation is similar for eroded PPA time. Rather than trying to “polyfilla” over this poor planning on the part of the school leader, staff should take advantage of the new collective bargaining facility in TNC 2024/2 and speak to their union representative to raise these issues with the Principal. A good leader will understand the issue, and work with staff representatives to find a solution to the problem without adding to staff workload.

Unless staff tell school leaders that their Directed Time budgets are insufficient, or that working practices are eroding their allocated PPA time, that school leader will not know how to adjust their planning in subsequent years. Principal training on Directed Time budgeting repeatedly warns that poor planning could result in staff exhausting their 1265 hours before the end of the year, so it is an issue that all Principals should be keenly aware of.

Poor planning by leaders should not be offset by the goodwill of teachers.

5. How to reduce workload at home.

Christmas break in…

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