The Education Alliance (TEAL), which runs 12 academies in Yorkshire, have received national attention this week following the announcement of an increased maternity pay package for their staff.
The move, led by Jonny Uttley, responds (in part) to two years of campaigning from The MTPT Project calling for equal and improved parental leave and pay for teachers. Staff working at TEAL will receive eight weeks’ full pay and 18 weeks at half pay, among other family-friendly policy updates.
A classroom teacher on an M6 salary working at a TEAL academy will therefore receive £4,000 more than a colleague in receipt of the enhanced maternity pay offered by the burgundy book; a leader on L14 will be £6,500 better off.
Even though this move has the potential to significantly impact recruitment and retention at TEAL, their motivation is primarily ethical: in an increasingly competitive and challenging landscape, increasing maternity pay to match other graduate and public-sector offers is an important value statement for their staff.
However, this boost (though bold) only goes part of the way to solving issues of inequality in education. The MTPT Project’s campaign is not just for improvements to parental leave, but equality in leave packages. TEAL’s move – alongside the offers of the other MATs and London boroughs mentioned in the Guardian article – still genders the role of parenting, considering it very much a woman’s job.
In comparison to many other sectors (including, infamously, the DfE who offer 26 weeks’ equal parental leave to all parents), becoming a father as a teacher is frankly a bit rubbish. The Burgundy Book offers new fathers, non-birthing partners, and secondary adopters two weeks of leave, one of which is paid at the discretion of the headteacher, if qualifying criteria are met.
It’s no wonder then that when a baby arrives our gendered policies push mothers into the caregiver role, and leave fathers no other option than to pursue the path of bread-winner.
Men taking parental leave is good for women’s careers
When they have considered increasing paternity pay (and many haven’t even thought about it), school and MAT leaders I’ve spoken to cite budget restraints or a comparatively uncompelling argument for supporting new fathers in this way. After all, it’s women in their thirties who are leaving in huge numbers, not men. Motherhood is a barrier to retention in schools, not fatherhood.
Such thinking, however, doesn’t align with the research. In heterosexual couples, when men take an extended period of leave in the first year of their child’s life, it is good for women’s careers. It’s also good for the outcomes of the child, for the parents’ relationship and for men’s wellbeing.
If we want to support women in the workforce and the children in our schools, we therefore need to support men to be physically present as fathers.
What’s more, men are a minority in the teacher workforce. Those aged 25-40 – that key child-bearing age – make up an even smaller percentage.
Whittle it down even further to those men who will actually become fathers in a given year and feel comfortable taking an extended period of leave, and the pool of candidates eligible for an increased paternity pay package reduces to insignificant figures.
Not only would offering new fathers, non-birthing partners and secondary adopters increased pay therefore not cost schools that much, it would also represent a huge value statement to staff.
Offering three weeks at full pay would put an employer ahead of the competition and mean the world to a new parent. Equalising to the Burgundy Book offer of four weeks at full pay, two weeks at 90 per cent and 12 weeks at half pay would be groundbreaking.
