Schools urged to trial four-day week to ease pressure on teachers in England and Wales
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2025/dec/01/schools-urged-to-trial-four-day-week-to-ease-pressure-on-teachers-in-england-and-wales
Posted by Shiny-Tie-126
32 Comments
Is this a four day week for teachers or a four day school week in general? Because if the later, what about pressure on working parents, now having to find a day’s child care.
I appreciate teaching is stressful but not sure taking multiple parents out of the work force potentially 20% of the week to give a teacher a break is the solution.
So who’s going to look after the kids, don’t workers also need to have the time and be able to afford the adjustment too?
What about pressure on the parents, or does that mean extra teachers for the additional day?
Given how poorly kids are being educated at home this would be pretty bad?
Would only work if this was done in conjunction with employers mandating 4 day working weeks, parents can’t afford a day off every week for childcare, bit of a silly suggestion here.
Sounds like a terrible idea to me. Put all the pressure of 5 days into 4 in order to reduce student and staff stress?
Surely it would make more sense to improve working conditions across all five days. Higher salaries, reduced teaching and pastoral responsibilities, regulations around overtime, additional TA funding for SEN students.
Long-term the only way to attract more people to the teaching profession is to change the perception that this job is only for the most resilient and passionate who are willing to work themselves half to death for the sake of the children.
So my kids primary already does this. For one day a week they have French, *something else,* and PE, all taken by different teachers. Their proper class teacher stays home.
I honestly thought it was pretty standard.
Isn’t teaching already the job with the most holidays? I think so. A number of schools in my county already finish early on Friday as it is.
I thought the purpose of children attending school 5 days a week is to prepare them for working life when they’re older?
In case anyone was wondering, it’s the “The 4 Day Week Foundation” that’s campaigning for this.
besides kids teachers have lots of paperwork, seems like they will do it at home how
I’d propose longer days 8-6. Shorter holidays maybe 2 mandated weeks at Christmas. Two mandated week at the end of the year. Then 4 weeks you can take where you’d like.
But this comes with shorter teaching blocks say 10-14 with an hr for lunch.
In primary school the rest of the day is play based.
In secondary school it’s hobbies and interest supported perhaps with a slightly longer working block 10-16.
Or…we stop treating teachers like a Victorian sweatshop and start embracing technology to improve education rather than work against it.
The NUT is stuck in the dark ages.
The “admin” that teachers do is utterly unnecessary.
As I understand it the proposal is for teachers to be in the classroom with the pupils for four days each week rather than five and to use the last day for admin, marking, lesson prep etc. The pupils would continue to be taught for five days but teachers would be rotated.
This seems like a sensible way to do things as they shouldn’t have to spend so much time outside of school and the admin tasks.
ITT: I have provided my opinions on the headline only and made huge leaps based on this alone.
My wife is a teacher and spent a good chunk of her Sunday doing marking because she doesn’t get enough marking and prep time.
The academy she is at has then doing more teaching lesson time then is really meant to happen under what was negotiated previously by unions.
Having a system where teachers get more marketing and prep time to make the job actually doable within the hours would be a start.
But something has to change as there is a recruitment and retention crisis in teaching at the moment.
So I actually did this during my brief teaching career. It was brief because I left after having a significant mental health breakdown due to stress. That one day (one day NQT time and one day PPA alternating weekly) was helpful but still did nothing to ameliorate the workload from the four other days in the week. The kids were OK but it was also the beginning of the end for attention span back then, parents were demanding you move heaven and earth for their child, and senior leaders expected perfection right out of the gate: it was an awful environment and not conducive to good mental health. It is a nice idea but it will not stop the mass exodus of teachers that we are still seeing.
This is kinda already happening most schools in kent do half day Fridays
The pressure of 6 weeks off in the summer must be awful
How about we compromise. Half day on Fridays, for the parents work too.
Sounds like they need more teachers, some doing the marking a prep for multiple classes and the others teaching.
There’s an arguement that a shorter week and shorter summer holidays could be beneficial to learning. I know there had been plenty of research showing there is a real decline in standards after the 6 week summer break. The calendar definitely needs revising, but will inevitably be blocked by teaching unions.
>James Reeves, the 4 Day Week Foundation’s campaign manager, said: “Teachers are burning out at unprecedented rates. A four-day week isn’t about doing less – it’s about working smarter, protecting staff wellbeing and ultimately improving outcomes for students.
If it’s not about doing less, it will make no difference to teacher retention. The sheer volume of workload is the problem.
This is a bit confusing. So England and Wales are being urged to trial a 4 day week because of what Scotland announced, but that isn’t what Scotland is doing. Scotland is doing a 5 day working week but only 4 days teaching in the classroom. They are giving teachers a full day to do their PPA (lesson prep, marking, printing, admin etc).
More PPA time is pretty much the biggest request of teachers and teaching unions. I don’t know if this is the national standard but the schools I volunteered in only gave teachers 1.5 hours a week for PPA. Teachers didn’t even have time to collect their printing from reprographics and students were always being sent there at the start of class to collect the sheets for their lesson.
A 4 day working week will still lead to teachers working unpaid one day a week to do their PPA. It won’t help burnout.
If this was functional the SNP woulf have already done it.
Considering the amount of homework kids get, a four day week would be better.
No wonder teachers are struggling with workload. Even some of the adults in this chat are only reading the headline then complaining about childcare.
Read the article and consider what it says. Then, consider that teachers are more than just child care.
This won’t work, it’s just a pipe dream. Anything that’s challenges the economy financially is a no.
But the amount that needs to be taught will be the same and parents will need to find a day of kid cover?
No. Give the schools power to exclude for slight infractions. Two exclusions = permanent expulsion. Two permanent expulsions from any two schools = legally required to attend military boarding school or leave the country and find schooling elsewhere. Do that and you make teachers lives and the education of good students infinitely better overnight.
LOL … but they still fine parents for taking the children out of school for a holiday. Clown planet.
So rather than support teachers in their work, we harm our childrens education?
I bet this is really about budgets