A raw deal for part-time leaders?

Lindsay Patience, Teacher, Putney High School The recommendation that middle and senior leaders should be able to work flexibly was a main finding from the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) report ‘Part-time teaching and flexible working in secondary schools’ (Sharp et al., 2019), and flexible working is a key strand of the Department for Education’s Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy (DfE, 2019a). But are those who work – or want to work – flexibly truly able to access leadership posts in our schools? This article examines the current landscape for flexible working in school leadership positions and considers the possible issues and benefits. The issues The education sector lags behind other industries in terms of flexible working. Twenty-eight per cent of female teachers work part time, compared with 40 per cent of all female employees in the UK. For men, it is eight per cent in the education sector compared to 12 per cent nationally (Carr