Dixons Academies Trust has made headlines with its nine-day fortnight for teachers, being piloted across its 17 schools.
The first data from the trial suggests it’s a hit for staff, with job satisfaction up and fewer thinking about leaving.
But trade-offs include students being taught in classes of up to 60 and pupils having two teachers for subjects.
One term in, Schools Week visited Dixons Fazakerley Academy, in Liverpool, to see how it’s going…
‘We want innovation’
All teachers and leaders across Dixons schools have had an extra day off each fortnight since September. This is in addition to their 10 per cent planning, preparation and assessment (PPA) time.
Fazakerley Academy’s head Chris Wilson said staff were “free to use that day as they see fit”. While this would normally be free time, he said some staff may use it to catch up on work.
The trust has given its schools freedom to experiment with how to staff and implement it.
“All of our schools are able to tackle this in their own way. We want innovation, initially, we want to be able to experiment,” the trust’s chief executive, Luke Sparkes, said.
“And it may be that we coalesce around two or three ways of doing this in the future – but we’ve given people quite a lot of autonomy this year.”
Government surveys show that nearly half of teachers have flexible working, but half were those working part-time.
Education has been left behind in the post-Covid flexible working revolution. Sparkes said more must be done to attract “post-millennials” to the profession.
Timetable trials
But school timetables are notoriously a hurdle for flexible working. All Dixons’ schools work to a two-week timetable. At Fazakerley Academy, Wilson decided everyone would work on Mondays and Fridays, partly because there are more safeguarding incidents on these days.
So staff get a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday off once a fortnight.
“The most effective way we found so far is that we have faculties all timetabled together on their 0.9 day,” Wilson said.
So, one department, or two if they’re smaller, will be off timetable together once a fortnight.
Out of 56 possible lessons over the two weeks – teachers now teach 44 at Fazakerley Academy. Students have the same number of lessons per subject, and don’t get any extra time off.
Wilson said all big external events – such as parent and opening evenings – are now also scheduled for a Monday. Long-term planning is also needed to ensure everyone is in for key meetings.
“Any leader reading this will understand that one of the biggest challenges is that you can be quite nervous when school’s running and you’re not in it,” he added about leaders also having a day off a fortnight.
But this has provided an opportunity for other leaders to gain experience by stepping up, Wilson said, adding: “I don’t want you to think that on a 0.9 day I’m completely unreachable on a Pacific island somewhere. I’m always available if needed.”
What are the costs?
Dixons said the policy hadn’t cost it any more money. This is because it has already “skewed” resources towards employing more teachers.
Teachers already had more PPA time, so this gave schools flexibility to fit in the day off.
It has also overseen a “full transformation” of its back office and business services, which saved cash, such as by centralising school admin.
Sparkes expected this to generate savings of £1 million a year by 2026-27. But he said this change wasn’t a “specific enabler of the nine-day fortnight”.
Early indicators are that staff sickness has fallen, which has also brought savings.
Fazakerley Academy’s spending on cover staff for the first three months of last year was £44,000. This fell to £9,000 over the same stretch this year.
“There’s a significant cost to children when teachers are not well, stressed, are pressured, and therefore are not in school as often as we would all like them to be,” Wilson added.
But Sparkes said there are still trade-offs to facilitate the scheme.
Classes of 60 children
Dixons uses “dynamic student grouping” in most of its secondaries. Sparkes said this pre-dated the nine-day fortnight, but has helped.
“Sometimes you might be in a larger group with a teacher, but other times you might be in a very small group – and that enables a bit of flex in the timetable,” Sparkes added.
Some lessons might have as few as five or 10 students, or as many as 60. Larger classes would have several staff, though. And most lessons will still have 25 to 30 students, Sparkes said.
“So, you might get expert input in a large group, then you might be in a small group for some intervention support. It’s that dynamic,” he said.
He said the approach “can help” with enabling teachers having time off, but is “not a prerequisite”.
Part of this is trying to “move away” from the “traditional” one-teacher, one-class model – and towards starting to think about teams of staff around larger groups of children, he said, adding that there hadn’t been a backlash from parents.
Leaders make the call on whether using larger class sizes is the right approach.
Sparkes said it had “proven to be a successful approach in our highest performing schools – which is why it is a practice we are interested in exploring further as we think about how to achieve greater flexibility for the workforce of the future”.
Split classes are also sometimes needed to make the timetable work – where students have two teachers across their subject.
Sparkes questioned the view that these are “bad”, arguing it can be a “good thing” for students to benefit from the “strengths of both those teachers”.
Teacher feedback ‘incredible’
The trust conducted an anonymous survey of 1,065 staff across its schools on the Edurio platform in November – two months after the policy was introduced.
Data, shared with Schools Week, showed that 43 per cent were satisfied with their “work-life harmony” – up three percentage points from February.
Sixty-two per cent said they’d never or rarely contemplated quitting during the previous three months, up from 50 per cent in February.
Meanwhile, nearly half of those polled by Dixons were likely to recommend the trust as a good place to work – up from 37 per cent last year.
Anecdotally, heads are also reporting more applications for teaching jobs – with candidates referring to the new policy as an enticing factor, Dixons said.
The trust had 38 teaching applications in October 2023, compared to 157 this year.
“Colleagues are more refreshed, they’re more energetic, they’re happier. Our survey’s got some truly incredible results,” said Wilson.
“I’ve always aspired to be a principal, and I’ve done that in the knowledge that the workload will be significant. But 0.9 allows me the flexibility in supporting my family.”
Wilson said 84 per cent of his staff gave positive responses regarding job satisfaction, up from 42 per cent last year.
Caitlin Moore, history teacher at Fazakerley Academy, said she “would have been feeling really burnt out and exhausted at this point in the year” without the fortnightly break.
She thinks the policy will boost retention, especially among early career teachers.
Teachers variously said they use their day off to catch up on marking, spend time with friends and family and pursue continuing professional development opportunities, while one nipped to Birmingham to buy a new car.
What about the pupils?
One element less explored so far is the impact on pupils.
The Ambition Institute has been funded by the Education Endowment Foundation to evaluate whether Dixons’ scheme not just boosts retention, but also to explore the impact on and implications for young people.
A “scoping phase” will conclude in spring 2025, before an “impact evaluation phase”.
Sparkes said attendance is up, suspensions are down and “there’s no detriment to children”.
Wilson added the offer children are getting is “just as rigorous” and “more consistent” – as fewer staff are off and are better rested.
The government this week also asked for official recommendations on how teacher pay and conditions could be updated to encourage not just nine-day teaching fortnights, but also job-shares, partial retirement and staggered starts.
Sparkes said the trust would continue the pilot scheme next year, as he felt it needed two years to learn from it. By the end of next year, he hoped to have a “better idea as to is this something we want to continue longer term”.
And he’s hoping to “go further, not row back”, so Dixons can offer even teachers “even more flexibility”.
