That this House has considered e-petition 727514 relating to the length of the school week.
It is a pleasure to take part in a debate in which you are presiding, Mrs Hobhouse, and to move this motion on behalf of the Petitions Committee, especially because I was a secondary school teacher for almost a decade before I came to this place. The petition calls on the Government to reduce the school week from five days to four, while making each of the remaining school days one hour longer.
Ahead of these debates, I always try to speak with the petition’s creator to get a sense of why they started it, and I spoke with the creator of this petition before the Christmas break. He joins us in the Gallery with his mother, who is a teacher herself, and that is a central part of the reason why he began the petition. He had learned in school that almost a third of teachers leave the profession within five years. He hoped that a four-day school week would give teachers more time to spend with their families and encourage them to stay in the classroom—where we all want our best teachers to be—and he thinks that pupils could use their day out of school to do volunteering or other positive things in their local community
The proposal attracted significant interest; the petition has been signed by more than 126,000 people. Unfortunately, I do not have a breakdown of the ages of those signatories—[Laughter.] However, I suspect—and the laughter tells me that colleagues do too—that, given that this issue affects so many young people, many of the people who signed the petition may well be of school age. I think it is important that we bring their views into this debate.
Last month, I had the privilege of meeting secondary school pupils visiting Parliament, who were constituents of the right hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes), and hearing their thoughts about this idea. I spoke to some Back Benchers before going, and they said, “Well, of course they’re going to support it; it’s another day off school,” but yet again, adults overlooked how seriously young people would take it. Before we dismiss their enthusiasm out of hand, there are some really important things to consider that underpinned their interest. Yes, they liked the idea, but more than 15% said that they thought it would reduce school absences, and more than a quarter thought that it would improve their mental health.
That is a really serious point. The most recent NHS children and young people’s mental health survey found that one in five children aged eight to 16 had a probable mental health condition. We know that mental health concerns among young people have risen since the covid-19 pandemic, when many were so isolated. Factors such as climate change, extremism in politics and the cost of housing leave many young people feeling pessimistic about the future.
The pupils I spoke to also had some serious questions about the proposal, and went straight for the logistics of how it would work. Three big worries came through. The main argument against the idea, particularly among the pupils we polled, was that a longer day would be too tiring and that, by the time people got to what I referred to as period 6 when I was in school and when I was teaching—the sixth hour of the day—brains would be overused and they would not be quite as productive. Some thought that they would get more homework, that it would be harder to do it on top of longer school days, and that that would mean a reduction in the face-to-face time they got with their teachers.
Other pupils had questions about where the new periods would be added. Would they get extra breaks? Would the period go at the start or the end of the day? Older pupils, in particular, were concerned about the impact on their exams. Their school had six 50-minute lessons a day, and they were worried about where the lost hours would come from if they got 200 minutes back in four additional 50-minute lessons.
The final concern that came through strongly, which is easy to overlook but is vital when we consider this issue, was safety. Many pupils pointed out that, despite attending a school on the edge of a major city and having much better access to street lighting than some in rural areas such as the one I represent, a longer school day would mean that they would go home or to school in the dark, especially in the winter. It would be even worse if they wanted to do an extracurricular activity for an hour after school, in which case it could well be 5.30 pm or close to 6 pm by the time they went home. As we see outside today, it can be very dark at 6.05 pm. A number of pupils expressed real concern about whether they would be safe walking home in the dark if the proposed change were made.
This is a devolved issue, but I did post about it on my Facebook page, because it is an interesting question—I think the post had about 100,000 views and just under 400 comments. One of the challenges that people brought up, which I think my hon. Friend missed from his list, was the impact of longer days on kids with additional support needs, and how their learning might be supported in the classroom as well as on the day off. We have to acknowledge the impact on students and their learning, but does he agree that we also have to think about the impact on children with additional support needs and their families?
My hon. Friend makes an important contribution. So often the system has been designed in one way and within it there is huge complexity, particularly when it comes to pupils with additional needs or special educational needs and disabilities. Redesigning the entire school week would obviously mean redesigning many of the other support factors that go around it. That point could easily be missed if we looked at this issue without the required detail. My hon. Friend’s level of social media engagement shames me; I shall have a drink with him later to ask how he is getting on with it.
In addition to meeting pupils from the constituency of the right hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North, I spoke to the National Association of Head Teachers. It shared some of their concerns, especially around mental health, but ultimately did not think that this proposal was the answer. In the NAHT’s view, the best way to ease the strain on pupils would be to reduce course content and the number of exams at the end of courses.
The NAHT had a number of other issues with the proposal. One was the impact it would have on extracurricular activities, which I have already mentioned. That is especially important, because pupils cited that as one of the main reasons for supporting the proposal: they wanted more time away from school to do volunteering or non-curricular stuff from which they get some value. The NAHT worried that the school day running later could mean fewer clubs for sports, music and similar things at the end of the day, and ultimately a less rich offer for pupils. A wealth of educational evidence shows that access to extracurricular activities is one of the things that helps to close attainment gaps right across the country.
The NAHT also worried that an earlier start to the school day would have a bad impact on secondary pupils. Studies show that teenagers’ sleep patterns mean they are best prepared to learn when they have slightly later starts, not earlier ones. Overall, like the pupils who opposed the petition, the NAHT was concerned that a longer school day would be too tiring, especially for primary school pupils, who need breaks and shorter spells of concentration to learn at their best.
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. I have to declare an interest: my children asked me to do so. I think one of them actually signed the petition; I am not sure what the age limit is, but he is certainly very interested in the debate.
I will leave the education questions to my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Dave Robertson), who has just spoken so eloquently, and to other people who know so much about education. My background is in health, so I come at the debate from that point of view, and I absolutely hear and reiterate the points about mental health conditions for young people, particularly post pandemic. That is a serious issue, and I know that the schools in my constituency have serious concerns about absenteeism and providing the best support that they can for pupils.
In terms of health issues, I want to draw some parallels with research that has been done on a four-day working week. My hon. Friend mentioned that if we did go to a four-day school week, that would obviously have implications for parents, who would need to be able to ensure that their children were safe and cared for on the fifth day. Some good research has been done on four-day working weeks, and it showed—this is within my remit—that in companies that offered one, there was a significant improvement in mental and physical health for workers. The before-and-after data shows that 39% of employees were less stressed and 71% had reduced levels of burnout at the end of the trial, which is very significant and a serious consideration given what we have heard about the enormous number of teachers who are leaving with burnout.
Of the 61 companies participating in the research, 56—that is 92%—are continuing with the four-day week, with 18 confirming that the policy is a permanent change. I wonder whether this debate, specific as it is to a four-day week for schools, is part of a wider consideration, and perhaps a wider cultural change, as to how we reorientate the work-life balance, which I think most of us would say is not optimal for a good number of people in this country and perhaps globally.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Hobhouse, and I wish you a very happy new year. I thank the hon. Member for Lichfield (Dave Robertson) for opening the debate. He obviously has a lot of experience in the classroom and has taken the themes behind the petition very seriously. I start by sending out heartfelt thanks to teachers up and down the country; I hope they have all had a lovely Christmas break and I recognise how hard they are working, in increasingly challenging circumstances.
Having looked into the reasons behind the petition, it seems that one of the sentiments was that we need to do what we can to keep our teachers in the profession. Teachers are the most important asset in our education system, and with every year of experience gained they become more valuable. We want to see world-class teachers in our classrooms, with the appropriate training and support to deliver the best education to all our children.
However, we currently face a serious teacher retention problem. Heavy workloads created by unnecessary bureaucracy and increasingly challenging pupil behaviour are driving teachers to leave the profession. Although new teachers keep coming in, we are trying to fill a leaky bucket as more experienced teachers leave in droves.
The most recent Working Lives of Teachers and Leaders survey found that 68% of teachers and school leaders did not think they had an acceptable workload and 55% felt they did not have sufficient control over their workload. In the same survey, more than six in 10 teachers who responded said that they felt at least half their working time was spent on tasks other than teaching. Those findings highlight teachers’ growing frustration with an increasingly unmanageable workload, being swamped by administrative work when they just want to get on with actually teaching the kids.
The Education Select Committee, on which I sit, heard recently about the dire situation we are now in with teacher retention. We were told that 9% leave the profession within a year, a quarter leave within three years and a third within five years. Those figures are far too high and are deeply worrying. It is clear that unless we tackle the reasons for teachers leaving, we will not have a stable, effective and consistent workforce. It does not matter how many teachers we recruit, if we cannot hold on to them after just a few years.
I wish you, Mrs Hobhouse, all Members, Clerks and staff of Parliament, and our visitors today a happy new year. I am pleased to respond to the debate on the length of the school week.
I thank the hon. Member for Lichfield (Dave Robertson) for leading the debate and I congratulate the young people behind the petition who have brought us together to discuss it here. I confess I have not told my own children what I am doing this evening; I hope they are not watching the Parliament channel for the first time in their lives, because my job tonight is to complete the party consensus and disappoint the signatories. While we have heard some valid arguments about teacher recruitment and retention and how the reality of school works for many children, the challenges that we have heard about are probably best met with solutions other than shortening the school week.
Broadly speaking, we have more knowledge and data about what works in education that ever before, which gives us some confidence in saying we know how to make education work best for young people. Success obviously depends on rewarding excellence and raising standards, and the research shows that reducing the length of the school week would mean fewer opportunities to learn and improve. Less time spent with teachers in the classroom would lead to fewer activities and teaching hours, especially for the most deprived children, who might lack alternatives to those activities away from their schools. If anything, we need children to spend more time at school so they can enjoy the greatest possible benefit from full-time education.
Of course, there should be a balance: schools create opportunities for children to learn social skills, make friends, explore new interests and be active, and no one here wants children to be constantly working without rest or support, especially when they are struggling. However, our schools would be unbalanced by the loss of an entire school day. It is not credible that five days of learning and activity could be realistically compressed into four. Cutting lesson times would harm children, especially those who are struggling the most and need more help.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Hobhouse. Happy new year to one and all. I congratulate the young person who started this petition for securing this debate; it is always good to see pupils actively involved in thinking about the world around them and campaigning for the change that they want to see. I started my career as a secondary school citizenship teacher, so I welcome seeing young people using the instruments of their democracy in such a way. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Dave Robertson) for opening the debate.
High and rising standards are at the heart of this Government’s mission to break down barriers to opportunity at every stage. Schools in England have made excellent progress in recent years and our brilliant teachers provide high-quality education to millions of children. The success of new freedoms and responsibilities for schools, starting with the city academies programme in the 2000s, our new-found discipline in the pursuit of evidence in the education system in England and the professional development that means we now have the most expert teaching workforce ever have all been hard fought for and are now delivering real results for children.
Although I understand why a four-day school week would appeal to some, it is essential that we do not compromise the great progress that has been made over recent years by reducing the amount of time that pupils spend at school, either in total or spread over a five-day week. Evidence, including research by the Education Policy Institute published in 2024, has shown that additional time in school, when used effectively, can have a positive impact on pupil attainment, particularly for the most vulnerable. Schools need enough time to deliver the curriculum to a high standard while ensuring appropriate breaks and opportunities for wider enrichment. Shortening the school week would upset that balance, making it harder for pupils to secure the knowledge and skills they need to go on to lead rich and fulfilling lives. Compressing more hours into fewer days would squeeze out valuable time for school clubs, sport or homework.
Again, I thank the petitioners and the petition creator for making sure could discuss this issue. I also thank all those who contributed to this debate: my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Dr Arthur), who showed his support for pupils with additional educational needs; my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Dr Cooper), who gave her views on the health and wider implications of how such a change might function and its place within the larger debate; and the hon. Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden), who raised the important issue of teacher retention. The median length of a teaching career has been decreasing for years. When the treadmill is that short, it does not matter how fast people are shuffled on to it if they fall off the back just as fast. However, I caution her on one point: we have world-class teachers in our classrooms up and down the country.
I also thank the hon. Member for West Suffolk (Nick Timothy) for sharing a rare moment of policy agreement across all the major parties. I am sure normal service will be resumed very soon. We may have to agree to disagree on the simple idea that more education means better outcomes, because I am not entirely certain that it is linear—I think that a maximum can be reached, but I am sure that we can have that debate at length another time. I am also not sure that any robust evidence links school structures, academies and free schools to better outcomes on their own. It is teachers who make excellent education, not school structures.
Finally, I thank my hon. Friend the Minister, who has first-hand experience as a teacher, for raising the importance of extracurricular activities as well as the impact that inflexible working has on retention and the ways that we can work around that to support teachers in the classroom. He may, however, have missed an opportunity to flag up Labour’s excellent Employment Rights Act 2025 as part of that.
6:38 pm
Sitting adjourned.
Importantly, the NAHT recognised the impact on parents. For someone who works five days a week, suddenly needing to provide childcare on one of those days would be a huge challenge. I am a former teacher, and one of the things that always used to wind me up about debates like this was hearing people say, “But what about childcare?” I used to lose my mind, because teachers do so much more than childcare. However, it is a fact that if the kids are in school, their childcare is taken care of, and that taking kids out of school for one day a week would leave a huge void to be filled. Access to childcare is one of the major issues that affects young families, and this proposal would exacerbate that rather than solve it.
However, the NAHT did agree with the petitioners, as I do, that there is a significant problem with teacher retention. Britain has the youngest teaching workforce in the OECD. Not only are teachers leaving the profession, but many are unwilling to take on leadership roles, because the work is just so heavy, especially in primary schools. The NAHT favours a four-day teaching week—five days of classes, but a day a week for teachers to focus on lesson prep and administration, which we used to call PPA back in my day—and making the job more sustainable.
Before I conclude, I want to say something from my personal experience as a classroom teacher for almost a decade. I had the great privilege of working at the largest school in the country. We had a 15-form entry, so we had 15 classes in each year group; we had 2,500 kids on site every day and more than 300 staff. I was the school’s principal union rep during my time there. In 2015, we trialled something very similar to this proposal as a way of trying to push attainment up, to make sure that every kid who could just get over that grade got over that grade. We cancelled all staff meetings, we cancelled all staff time with other staff, and we did everything for contact. We put on a period 6—an additional hour at the end of every day. All of my members said, “You know what? If this is for the good of the kids and the school, let’s try it. Let’s give it a go and see what happens.”
We all went for it, and it was such hard work to put on valuable sessions for that sixth hour of the day. When we came to do an analysis in the September, we could not find that it had made any difference, positive or negative. What we found from doing it—having to move all this stuff around and the additional workload that came with it—was that the reason why the school day is six hours long, and has been six hours long for so long, is that that is what brains are designed to learn in. Adding that sixth hour had almost no impact—certainly no measurable impact—on pupil outcomes, and we had a big enough sample size to give at least some credence to the conclusion.
It is clear from the Government’s written response to the petition that they do not support the proposal, and there are clear reasons for that, but I would be interested to hear the Minister’s views on some of the themes that underpin the petition, because it is also clear that there were reasons for starting it that relate to children’s mental health, opportunities for hobbies and volunteering, and retention of experienced teachers in order to give our children the best start possible.
I would like the Minister to consider a couple of things and I am sure he will. The petition says that the teaching time per week would stay the same. I know that there has already been a conversation with my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield about the curriculum’s shape and size and the exam stresses that our children face. Again, I will leave that to people who know much more about education, but does this need to be the case? If the teaching time remained the same on the four days and, as has been said, the fifth day was for teachers to plan, would we be able to right-size and right-shape the curriculum to allow our children to be ready, post 18, to do whatever they wanted to in this world? I do not know the answer, and I would be interested to hear others’ thoughts.
This question has also been talked about: if we did move to a four-day week, should that be for all ages? I am a mum of two children who are now in high school, having been through pre-school and primary school. Pre-school—nursery—was mornings. There was no way my two little boys would have been able to cope for longer than that in pre-school. Similarly, having watched them coming out of primary school, I think a longer day there would have been a lot to deal with. But as they get older, I take the point about starting later—getting my 14-year-old out of bed is increasingly difficult. Is a longer day more viable for older children than for younger children? Should this be looked at more flexibly? I understand that in some schools around the country it is already happening—not just a four-day working week, but perhaps four and a half days or a nine-day fortnight. I understand that the Government have good reasons for not planning to introduce such a policy right now, but I do think this is part of a broader conversation. I welcome young people coming into the conversation and I look forward to the conversation continuing.
It is therefore important to address the issue of retention, and to note that it is exacerbated in schools in deprived areas. The Public Accounts Committee found that
“34% of teachers in the most disadvantaged schools had less than five years of experience, compared to 20% in the least disadvantaged”,
a figure that highlights how it is even harder to keep teachers in disadvantaged schools, something that has a knock-on effect on the future life chances of students in those schools, who risk
“being locked out of particular careers due to a lack of trained teachers”.
For example,
“31% of schools in the most disadvantaged areas do not offer Computer Science A-level (compared to 11% in the least disadvantaged areas)”.
Those are imbalances that we absolutely must iron out.
On the proposal made in the petition, the Liberal Democrats do not believe that switching to a four-day school week is the answer to the recruitment and retention problem. Reducing the school week would create additional challenges for families, as has already been mentioned, but particularly in relation to—and I apologise to the hon. Member for Lichfield—childcare. It would be not only logistically challenging, but financially punishing: parents would need to find extra childcare or reduce their working hours, which would make it harder for them to pay household bills and create even more pressure in a relentless cost of living crisis, and would have a damaging effect on the wider economy.
The impact of a four-day week on children’s mental health has been mentioned—but, while many younger people would love an extra day in bed, would it not be better for us to look at the mental health of our young people in a much broader sense? How can we design schools and the curriculum to improve, rather than harm, the mental health of our young people? How can we have more variety, less pressure, and more creativity, music and sport? We could even look at draconian uniform policies and their impact on children’s mental health. Let us design a system that is so great that children want to be there five days a week, not less than they already are.
Although it might sound as though a four-day week for teachers would resolve the retention crisis in our schools, it is not a practical solution for the economy at large. Instead, the Liberal Democrats believe the Government should consider offering greater access to flexible working arrangements for teachers while maintaining the five-day school week. We should follow a balanced approach that seeks to reduce teacher workload and improve retention, while ensuring that pupils continue to receive a complete and varied education. Giving teachers the support they need in the classroom, with enough teaching assistants, has to be part of that too.
The Public Accounts Committee found that, disappointingly, the Department for Education does not seem to understand the root causes of
“why and where workload is high”,
despite workload being the top reason for teachers leaving. We are calling on the Government to take a serious look at teachers’ working conditions, ensuring that they fully understand teacher workload, better to address the issue of teacher retention.
Furthermore, while the only real action from the Government on this issue has been to pledge 6,500 additional teachers over the course of this Parliament, the Public Accounts Committee found that it is unclear how that pledge will be delivered or how progress measured, or
“what achieving it will mean for existing and forecast teacher shortages.”
The Department for Education could not give the Committee a clear explanation of how the pledge was calculated or how it will fill existing gaps, with an estimated need for up to 12,500 more teachers in colleges alone by 2028.
Considering that the last teacher recruitment and retention strategy was published in 2019 by a failing Conservative Government, the Liberal Democrats are calling for a comprehensive teacher workforce strategy to properly address teacher recruitment and retention. Such a strategy would include reforming the School Teachers Review Body to make it genuinely independent of Government and able to recommend fair pay rises for teachers, fully funded every year, with the aim of ensuring that every secondary school child is taught by a specialist teacher in their subject.
We would also ensure that teacher training is properly funded so that all trainee posts in school are paid. Finally, we would introduce a clear and properly funded programme of high-quality professional development for all teachers, including training on effective parental engagement. By focusing on retention, flexibility and proper support for the profession, we believe we can create the conditions teachers deserve and need to thrive, not only for their benefit, but for pupils and families as well.
Not only children, but families would suffer. A four-day week would see more than a month’s worth of school time lost over a year. That is 39 days gone—much more than people’s total holiday entitlement. The loss of a whole day would force many working parents to find alternative childcare arrangements at huge personal expense. The cost of childcare, already incredibly high, would go up even further because of the spike in demand, while many other parents would simply work fewer hours or leave their jobs to look after children when they were not in school.
Campaigners for a shorter week believe that those problems can be made up for by extending the length of the remaining four days. The petition we are debating today proposed that we add an extra hour to each school day, but that would still mean two and a half hours being lost every week. Even if we extended the school day to a full eight hours under a four-day week schedule, children would be left with fewer hours of education each week.
Under the Conservatives, the minimum length of the school week was extended to 32 and a half hours, which helped children to master their subjects, discover new ones, get catch-up support, receive personalised tutoring and enjoy more extracurricular activities. Schools in Wales, where education is not run by the Conservatives, have also trialled longer school days. A four-day week would leave us a global outlier, with English children having less school time than their peers in other developed countries.
We know that more time spent in school leads to better outcomes. The Education Policy Institute has reviewed a series of global studies, and found
“a more pronounced impact on the academic outcomes of pupils from lower socio-economic backgrounds”.
The Education Endowment Foundation has also reviewed studies from multiple countries, and concluded that extended school time can deliver an average gain of three months’ additional progress for children—four months for children in primary schools, and two months for children in secondary schools.
There is significant evidence of this working in England. The DFE’s 2003 to 2010 extended schools and services programme, covering 1,500 schools, featured longer school days as part of its pilot scheme. That contributed towards 74% of schools seeing higher pupil engagement in learning and 82% higher pupil engagement in school, as well as a 54% reduction in discipline problems.
Research shows that the most deprived schools benefited: nearly six in 10 children on free school meals thought the scheme made an impact on schools with more than 20% of pupils on free school meals, but that falls to four in 10 children for schools with less than 20% of children on free school meals. Parents also agreed: surveys showed that 35% of parents believed their child’s grades improved as a result, 56% observed their child enjoying learning more and 58% saw their child demonstrating better language skills and being better socialised.
Longer school days are an important part of delivering more and better enrichment. Thanks to the academies and free schools revolution, that insight has been put into practice, with impressive results. Star Academies’ Eden Girls’ school delivers extra enrichment and learning through additional time between 3 pm and 3.45 pm. It is rated outstanding. Teachers play their part in that extra time, but the school has innovated by working with charities and community groups to give extra activities to its pupils, which means that teachers are enablers rather than being overburdened.
Extended school days have been introduced at St Martin’s academy, from 8.30 am to 4 pm, alongside full wraparound care to help parents. The school was rated outstanding last year. All Saints Catholic college, another outstanding school, piloted two non-compulsory extended school days for year 7 and year 8 pupils. The summer term pilot saw a 12% drop in missed homework sanctions and a 16% increase in good behaviour.
Academies at the Inspiration Trust in East Anglia have also proved that the approach works. They extended their school days for children in year 7 to year 11, providing an extra 500 days of teaching, or 20 more weeks of learning. Inspiration Trust has also ensured that teacher meetings are more efficiently organised, and that professional development opportunities are available. The results speak for themselves: 66% of pupils at Inspiration Trust primaries meet the expected standard in reading, writing and maths, which is higher than the 62% England average; 50% achieve grade 5 or above in English and maths GCSEs, compared with 45.9% across all state-funded schools; and 83% of all A-level results were between A* and C last year.
Lengthening the school week creates the space for schools to decide how they can best use their time and improve outcomes. Many school reformers rightly believe that that can be done with strong discipline, a knowledge-rich curriculum and teacher-led instruction. That was the insight that shaped the Conservative education reform that made English children the best readers in the world and saw England rise through the programme for international student assessment rankings. However, education reform is never over; it is a constant fight to keep schools in good shape so that children can get the best education possible.
I congratulate the young people who made this debate happen, and I recognise the good faith of all those who support the proposal. However, it is the position of my party, like that of the Government and the Liberal Democrats—the boring grown-ups that we are—that a shorter school week would weaken our schools and end up letting children down. Instead, we need to ensure that more time is spent at school and focus on giving every child the best chance to succeed in life.
For those reasons, the Government have recently restated our commitment to all state-funded mainstream schools delivering a minimum school week of 32.5 hours. Meeting that expectation is essential to delivering fairness and high standards for every child. Our published guidance encourages schools to consider extending their hours beyond the minimum and focus on how that time can best support pupil development and deliver school priorities. Reducing time spent in school risks having the opposite effect.
High-quality time in school is about far more than being in lessons: it is also about creating opportunities for social interaction, enrichment and personal growth. As well as supporting academic achievement, a broad and balanced education plays a vital role in supporting the mental health and wellbeing of children and young people; being in school across the working week ensures that they benefit from the full range of support that a high-quality education offers to help them thrive.
Insisting on schools being open and educating pupils five days a week should not negate the importance of testing new approaches to embedding flexible working practices for teachers. In fact, expanding and promoting flexible working opportunities in schools can help to recruit, retain and motivate teachers, as a number of Members have mentioned. There are many positive examples of schools embracing flexible working policies for teachers and the freedom that comes with that. Dixons Academies Trust offers a nine-day fortnight for all teachers without impacting pupil contact time; it achieves that through innovative methods in large group teaching and by using its senior leadership team in different ways. The results look very encouraging.
My Department is also backing 10 ambassador schools across the country to test and share the best flexible working approaches and solutions. Teacher workloads have been a challenge for schools, too often leading to high rates of teacher turnover. That is why it is so positive to see teachers working fewer hours now than in recent years according to the most recent working lives survey, which was published in November. There is certainly more work to do to ensure that teaching is a balanced and achievable long-term career, but positive progress is being made, as it is on retention and recruitment. However, that is probably a subject for a longer and separate Westminster Hall debate.
To conclude, reducing the school week would undermine pupil learning and development, and place unnecessary strain on working families. High standards, equal access and sufficient time in school are essential if we are to deliver on our commitment to give every child the opportunity to achieve and thrive. That is why this Government stand firmly by the principle of a minimum 32.5-hour school week delivered across five days, which ensures consistency, fairness and opportunity for every child in this country. Considering the wider benefits of time in school, I am afraid to say that the Government therefore have no plans to reduce the school week from five to four days, but I thank all the petitioners for engaging in this process so fully, and thank my colleagues from across the House for contributing to the debate.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered e-petition 727514 relating to the length of the school week.