During Covid, the near universal integration of communication platforms into everyday working practices changed the five-day week, nine to five office culture forever. In Spring 2022, we at SECG reflected on how we could mark this cultural step change and put staff work-life balance at the centre of our decision making, by introducing a four-day teaching week.
Our campuses are spread over 25 miles from Thurrock to Southend and staff commute from wider Essex, Kent, London and beyond. Like many providers, Fridays tend to be relatively lightly timetabled. So we asked ourselves whether we were obliging people to come in merely to be present onsite.
We decided to test the feasibility of a four-day opening and challenged curriculum heads to design student-friendly timetables over Monday to Thursday. If they had reported back that it simply was not possible, then we would have abandoned the idea. But they did not. It took effort, but all our curriculum areas delivered timetables they believed would work well for students.
At the start of 2022-23 the four-day campus operation began, albeit with our HE centre and another site remaining open on Fridays to facilitate apprenticeship delivery.
Revolutionary pilot
This revolutionary pilot was kept under review. It became clear that shoehorning a 24-hour teaching allocation into four days was challenging for teachers as it left little time for anything else. So the following year we reduced the weekly requirement to 23 hours to mitigate the stresses caused by four-day timetables. We would very much like to do more in this space, as soon as it is financially prudent to do so.
We were very clear from the outset that the change was not a move to a four-day working week. Fridays were for marking, preparation and other administrative tasks. In retrospect we were not sufficiently prescriptive about how the non-teaching day was to be used, and this caused some unintended confusion among teams.
At the start of 2023-24, we set out a clear structure to Fridays which established specific slots in the morning for team meetings and planned professional development sessions. Friday afternoons were kept free for admin. We have always been flexible about how those afternoons should be used. It was important to us that staff did not feel shackled to their laptops when they might be doing something more fulfilling. It was never SECG’s intention to substitute one type of presenteeism for another. We trust our staff to get their work done and are very relaxed about precisely when that happens.
All staff were canvassed for their feedback at the end of 2022/23. It was overwhelmingly positive. The four-day teaching week continued, and is now part of SECG’s employer value proposition.
We found that any negative impact on students was negligible as the universally compressed timetables enabled them to do part time work and fulfil other responsibilities on Fridays.
Other advantages
There have been other benefits too. We all remember in 2022 the impact on personal and institutional budgets of the huge rise in gas, oil and electricity costs. By closing most of our sites on Thursday evenings SECG has been able to save around £600,000 a year on utilities since the concept was introduced. Our staff turnover has also reduced by 9 per cent.
There may come a time when we feel the four-day teaching week is no longer right for us, but it is working so far. Our outcomes for learners increased significantly in 2023/24 and are above national averages for all levels. And we achieved a richly deserved Grade 2 from Ofsted in October. Is it right for everyone? Well, one of the beauties of the FE sector is that all colleges share the same stresses and strains but are also uniquely different, wrestling with their own internal and external dynamics. Our strategy may not be right for other organisations. But it is always exciting to explore the art of the possible and see where that takes you.
Your thoughts