Best Practice

Developing a school calendar which works for everyone

Whole-school issues Senior leadership
If you get your annual calendar wrong it can adversely affect staff across the school. If you get it right, it can tackle workload, boost CPD, and help your school and staff to thrive. Clare Duffy talks us through her school’s approach
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The job of pulling together the whole school calendar is often a thankless one. Balancing the demands of school life and all the associated events alongside the constraints of the 1,265 directed time requirements is no easy feat.

However, the school calendar, I would argue, is one of the most important elements of school planning to get right. It embodies the lived experience of your staff day-in, day-out throughout the academic year and reflects the culture of your school.

And if you get it wrong, then there are plenty of staff adversely affected, with a potential impact on staff wellbeing and morale.

We know that teacher recruitment and retention is challenging, and the research consistently shows us that addressing workload is paramount.

Indeed, the Teacher Workload Advisory Group stated in its report that “workload is consistently cited as one of the most important factors for teachers who are leaving the profession” (DfE, 2018).

The report’s recommendations include within them the importance of planning the yearly calendar carefully to avoid pinch-points.

An effective school calendar needs to be strategically mapped out, ensuring it covers the fundamentals such as reporting along with an embedded CPD programme.

At my school, Uppingham Community College, we have spent the last few years creating an effective whole school calendar which we believe now meets the needs of all stakeholders and which values staff wellbeing as a strategic priority.

 

Mapping out the fundamentals

When designing a school calendar it is important to consider elements that are essential to school life as well as elements which can drive school culture. For our school calendar this includes factoring in:

  • A reporting schedule evenly spread throughout the year – this includes assessment points and parents’ evenings planned to manage workload.
  • Exams and mock exams.
  • Regular department and pastoral team meetings.
  • Extended leadership meetings.
  • Senior leadership team weekly meetings.
  • All school trips and events – e.g. drama/music performances, visiting speakers.
  • New staff induction for the first seven weeks.
  • An embedded CPD programme which is cyclical and strategically planned for impact – ensuring our practices “make it possible for staff to engage in professional development and continually improve their practice” (Didau & Rose, 2016).
  • Voluntary staff socials every term so staff have a chance to bond outside of subject teams.

All of this is designed to come within the 1,265 directed time guidance – in fact, we ensure we are always under this allowance to support a good work/life balance for staff.

 

A methodical approach to planning

There are various stages involved in creating an effective school calendar and it pays to start early in the year so you can ensure everything is in place for the start of the next academic year.

Everything we do is governed by our staff wellbeing charter which states: “We want to create the conditions in which all staff can genuinely thrive; ensuring we have sensible working practices is fundamental to this.”

First, we review the previous year’s school calendar using staff voice and extended leadership team meetings to discuss what has worked well and what might need amending.

These discussions are invaluable in highlighting where there have been pinch-points during the year that staff struggled with, therefore allowing us to avoid the same issues again.

I then plan-out the time needed for the desired number of meetings, parents’ evenings, and training sessions. This always involves a compromise between an optimum amount and what fits within the 1,265 directive.

I use a spreadsheet to map this out taking into account staff duties and trapped time as well as the events they are expected to attend over the year (incidentally, there are some useful templates available from the teaching unions which you can adapt for your school).

As mentioned, we always ensure that everything totalled together comes to significantly less than the 1,265 limit for a normal teacher. This ensures staff wellbeing is considered and gives us some flexibility during the year if needed.

Finally, these calculations are checked and signed off by our school union rep. For those staff who are part-time, we ensure they do a proportional percentage of the required sessions and that the sessions are staggered over different days of the week so that they can access some of them.

Once I have decided the number of meetings needed, I ensure these are spread throughout the year. This year we have made a move to increase the autonomy of our middle leaders by allowing them more control over when they hold their department meetings.

Over the course of the year there are four set teaching and learning department meetings which support our CPD programme. The other eight hours of department meeting time can be allocated by the head of department according to what suits their strategic priorities, for example moderation meetings.

This is enhanced by a further six hours of meeting time dedicated to “embedding curriculum provision”, which is time heads of department can direct their teams to work on curriculum planning and creating resources.

In keeping with the recommendations of the Teacher Workload Advisory Group we are sensible in our approach to data. We have three data capture points a year which help to inform a parents’ evening once a year for each year group. We also ensure that no meetings or training sessions are scheduled during the mock exam period when we know staff will be busy marking.

Also included within the calendar are half-termly pastoral year team meetings and extended leadership team meetings. These have been reduced in recent years to make them more focused (with updates by email if urgent/necessary). This approach helps us to avoid unnecessary meetings and aligns with the ethos of our wellbeing charter.

 

CPD as a whole school priority

One of the most important changes we made to our calendar was our approach to CPD. Here we took inspiration from John Tomsett, who argues that “putting staff’s learning needs first before those of the students is the most effective way to create an expert teaching team” and therefore “teacher learning time must be woven into the fabric of a school’s structure” (Tomsett & Uttley, 2020).

This approach is underpinned by extensive research. The Teacher Development Trust suggests that “leaders can further enable improvements in teaching and learning by promoting continual teacher learning as a priority” (Cordingley et al, 2015) and the Education Endowment Foundation’s (EEF) report into effective professional development has embedding practice woven into its 14 mechanisms of professional development (Collin & Smith, 2021).

This year we have introduced a CPD programme called our Improving Teaching Programme. The success of this depends to a large extent on getting the content embedded throughout the school year.

Each term staff receive training on a teaching technique in an after-school session. This is followed by a cycle of peer learning walks to coach colleagues on the use of the teaching strategy.

Half-way through the term we have stipulated on the calendar a specific teaching and learning department team meeting where coaching conversations take place, discussing what colleagues have seen in learning walks, the successes they have had, and the areas they feel still need development.

Action planning takes place and the rest of the term is spent continuing learning walks, trialling strategies, and refining pedagogical practice. This process is then repeated in terms 2 and 3, focusing on the different teaching techniques.

Through this approach we are addressing the recommendations of the EEF report. Time is built into our school calendar, ensuring that the professional development is fully embedded and accessible to all staff for maximum impact.

In addition to this Improving Teaching Programme we include other training linked to our school strategic priorities. We disaggregate three of our training days to allow us to spread training across the year. This year we are trialling front-loading our training into the first half of the year for two reasons – first, it gives staff greater time to act on the training and, second, we hope it will provide some balance for the second part of the year when parents’ evenings occur.

The completed calendar is captured on one side of A4 as a yearly plan with all of the content colour-coded based on category (e.g. reports, trips, training). This is also duplicated in our online Office 365 school calendar. If amendments occur throughout the year (usually to trips) these documents are updated and communicated to staff via our staff bulletin.

 

Final thoughts

The school calendar is fundamental in helping to shape a school culture – if you value staff wellbeing then your calendar needs to reflect this with content planned to support it.

Consider pinch-points during the academic year (e.g. high marking times) and try to keep after-school sessions to a minimum at these points.

A good school calendar needs to be flexible to meet the demands of school life – therefore aim to keep under the 1,265 requirement and be prepared to make changes.

Allow leaders in your school some autonomy over the calendar so they can set department meetings at the times most beneficial for their priorities.

Clare Duffy is deputy principal (teaching and learning and CPD) at Uppingham Community College in Rutland. Follow her on X (Twitter) @ClareHDuffy and find her previous articles for SecEd via www.sec-ed.co.uk/authors/clare-duffy

 

Further information and resources