School leaders can often feel worried about the prospect of granting part-time hours to teaching staff. While many understand the retention and wellbeing benefits of part-time work, it can sometimes feel as if the barriers - whether perceived or actual - outweigh the advantages.  

One concern is how parents may react to the news that a teacher will be working part-time, especially in those cases where classes may have to be split or shared to accommodate a staff member’s flexible working arrangements.

So, what can school leaders do to put parents’ minds at ease?

Part-time teaching: busting the myth

It’s worth starting by dispelling the myth that shared classes are the sole product of a school that accommodates part-time members of staff. Trainee teachers, senior leaders with leadership responsibilities and the simple logistics of complex timetabling often result in class-sharing. Even at primary level, PPA cover or using expert teachers for specialist subjects like music or PE expose many children to more than one teacher throughout their formal education. 

When communicating with parents, a school leader’s first job might be to clearly explain that students learn from a whole community of teachers throughout the UK education system. 

This reassurance may be all that is needed to manage parents’ expectations and draw attention to the enriched education their child will receive at your school.

Acknowledging parents’ concerns 

Understanding parents’ apprehensions can help schools to anticipate and ease any objections. In their reports into job-sharing in the UK education system, June Smedley (1994) and Carolyne McDaid (1998) list the following concerns: poor communication between job sharers; confusion and lack of security for students, especially those with SEND; and a lack of commitment to teaching from the part-time members of staff - especially where ingrained traditional beliefs around motherhood impacting on a teacher’s priorities influence parents’ opinions.

However, both reports also note that once these initial concerns were addressed by the success of a job-share arrangement, parents were able to see the benefits of having two or more teachers, including: the opportunity to neutralise personality clashes between students and teachers; two sets of skills from two individual teachers; greater energy and enthusiasm from class teachers; joint planning; thorough record-keeping; and improved behaviour. 

Take special care if you work in a primary setting

Where objections are raised regarding job shares and split classes, there appears to be a significant divide between the experiences of secondary and primary teachers. 

Many parents have an image of a single Miss Honey-esque primary teacher who acts like a second parent to a child during school hours. This can be tricky for school leaders to overcome. However, there are a variety of options for managing parents’ expectations.

Jen Crittenden, deputy head of La Fontaine Academy in Bromley, South London, is a firm believer in flexible working, and has experience of part-time senior leadership herself. When her school was introducing flexible working practices, it arranged a meeting to explain the new arrangements to parents.

“When parents challenged, we gave examples [of flexible working] beyond education, and shared the benefits,” she says. “We tell our parents, as a collective, that we employ the best teachers, not just full-time teachers. We will always choose an amazing part-time teacher over an inferior full-time teacher, and parents are happy with our decision.”

Ellen Warburton, a Reception teacher at Kingham Primary School in Oxfordshire, has also found that parent information evenings, especially for incoming students, provide the best opportunity to communicate clear messages to parents.  

“We pre-empted any queries at the parent welcome evening, pointing out all the positives,” Warburton says. “A fresh teacher coming in midway through the week returns to school energised. [There are] opportunities for shared planning and to benefit from teachers’ individual expertise. Job sharers can also cover each other, so there’s rarely any need for an unfamiliar PPA teacher in the class.”

Being open and honest with parents at information evenings will also go a long way, says Aly Rook, a primary teacher in Portsmouth.

“I explained at open parents’ evening that I had two small children at home, and having a day with them would make me a better teacher,” she explains. “Most understood. I think being honest is important and goes a long way in building trusting relationships with parents.”

Communicate arrangements to students, too

When pupils transition to secondary school, not only are they navigating a much bigger site but also a whole range of new lessons and, subsequently, a much larger number of teachers, so objections to part-time working are likely to be fewer.  

Smedley’s study suggests that in secondary schools students are “accustomed to having a number of teachers” and that where issues occur, this is often down to a “lack of experience” of the practice of job-sharing, rather than the job-sharing set-up in itself. 

At secondary level, the most important channel of communication around part-time working is with students, not parents, suggests Georgina Tennant, an English teacher in King’s Lynn, Norfolk.

“A lot of classes are split because of complex timetabling, and teachers organise their curriculum to ensure that this is discrete,” she says. 

Outlining the rationale behind the timetable at the beginning of the year or term, and explaining how learning will be structured across the week between teachers, provides students with greater clarity and autonomy as they become more independent in their learning, Tennant explains.

And where a school’s context or parents’ attitudes may present some challenges, Rebecca Thomas-Snell, an English teacher on the South Coast, advises giving parents “advanced notice”.  

“It was a challenge when a member of staff went on maternity leave and another left, so classes in the second year of their key stage 4 and key stage 5 courses had to be split.  There were a few grumbles from parents, but we sent a letter outlining exactly who would be teaching what, when and by when, as well,” she says.  

Thomas-Snell adds that communicating the expertise of the teachers can resolve doubts over the reason for job sharing and reassure parents of the quality of their child’s education. 

Tips for communicating part-time working 

• Provide a clear introduction of the school’s flexible working culture - either at a parent information evening, or via a letter or email.
• Emphasise the benefits of job sharing.
• Emphasise the quality and expertise of teachers and their ability to work effectively together.
• Empathise with parents’ apprehensions, but set a status quo of flexibility to dispel unfounded concerns.
• Have confidence in parents - most will understand the motivation behind part-time working, and empathise with the teachers in question.

Emma Sheppard is founder of the Maternity Teacher/Paternity Teacher Project and a lead practitioner for English