Around this time last year our sister company FusionHR received many queries from schools about the effect of a school closure(s) on PPA and teachers’ working time. As we now approach our usual snowy season, we thought it would be useful to revisit this guidance in advance.
School closure announcement and staff communication
When you made the decision to close school, how was this communicated to staff? For example, did you announce that the school was closed to students but open for staff to come in and work, or that they can work from home if it is unsafe for them to travel?
If this was your approach, you can direct staff to utilise the school closure to ensure that their work is up-to-date. You must ensure that you have directed them appropriately and ideally have a written record of your instruction. You will need to be mindful of The School Teachers’ Pay and Conditions Document 2017 (para 52.5) (link https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/school-teachers-pay-and-conditions) as it states “a teacher must not be required to carry out any other duties during the teacher’s PPA time”.
If not, the employees have an argument that you decided to close the school, therefore there is no expectation on them to work during the school closure period.
Planning, Preparation and Assessment Activates – PPA
The unions’ position on PPA is very clear – PPA is timetabled into a teacher’s working week and if the school is closed on their PPA day then this time should be reallocated to ensure that they still receive their full PPA for the week.
In practice, you would hope (as you would with any workforce) that there is a little give and take between the employee and employer. In an ideal world, staff appreciate the difficulty of the situation and utilise the time the school is closed to get up-to-date. However, if you are challenged around this point, technically the PPA time has to be reallocated if the school was closed on their normal PPA day and no direction was provided.
Some schools have instructed staff to use the school closure day(s) to get up to speed with work and have counted the school closure day(s) as a working day(s). On that basis, some of our schools wanted to remove PPA from the following week’s timetable (on the basis that staff have had in excess of their allocated PPA time). Again, it is difficult for you to do this as the PPA has been timetabled into their each working week. In addition, employees can argue that they have only been able to “Plan”, “Prepare” but not “Assess” as the children have not been in school.
We appreciate that when a school closes the children have learning which they need to catch up on and any teaching time is valuable. Therefore, the best way forward is to seek agreement with staff around their PPA time and where possible reach a compromise position whereby staff do not necessarily take their full allocation, if they have been instructed to catch up during the school closure day(s).
If you have any queries about PPA, contracts and policies please get in touch with our sister company FusionHR by calling 01924 827869.
