The national agreement defines work/life balance as being "about helping teachers combine work with their personal interests outside work" and cites working hours and workload as key, but not exclusive, elements of this.
Other elements include a sense of control, personal fulfilment, career development, work flexibility, physical and emotional wellbeing, and the will of both employers and employees to ensure staff enjoy a reasonable work/life balance.
The national agreement acknowledges that teachers and headteachers often have excessive workloads and that every effort should be made to ensure that they, and by implication all other school staff, should enjoy a reasonable work/life balance.
As schools operate in many different contexts, and as what constitutes reasonable work/life balance varies over time and from individual to individual, schools need to develop and implement their own individual and sustainable work/life balance initiatives.
Implementing work/life balance initiatives is not only about improving the lives of school staff, it is also a highly effective way to raise school standards. Benefits often include:
- reduced stress and sickness, and lower supply requirement
- greater motivation, morale and physical and emotional wellbeing
- increased job satisfaction and improved recruitment and retention
- improved teaching and learning, better time management, and greater efficiency
- open and honest relationships and greater awareness of staff and pupil needs
- increased quality of leadership and management and more trust between management and other staff
- greater cohesion and communication between governors, senior management and all school staff, andÂ
- additional capacity to improve communication between schools and with local communities.
Implementation of work/life balance initiatives will also support schools as they embrace the extended schools agenda. By embedding explicit work boundaries, extended services can be developed in ways that are consistent with the tenets of workforce reform and do not place additional workload pressures on staff.
