This evaluation will explore whether a school policy enabling teachers to complete Planning, Preparation and Assessment (PPA) time offsite can improve teacher retention and related outcomes in primary schools. Teachers in state-maintained schools in England are entitled to at least 10% of their scheduled time as PPA time. Most teachers currently complete timetabled PPA at school but giving teachers the option to spend this time working remotely and ensuring that school timetables are supportive of this could potentially be a promising flexible working policy promoting teacher job satisfaction and well-being.
This study is a ‘School Choices’ project. School leaders make choices about school-wide practices and approaches that are intended to produce positive outcomes for pupils, such as how to organise the school day or communicate with families. However, many school-level practices have limited or no reliable evidence to inform effective decision-making. The aim of School Choices research is to produce causal evidence about the impact of different school-level approaches and policies on outcomes of interest, with particular attention to the impact on pupils from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds.
School Choices evaluations are divided into two phases: a scoping phase and an impact evaluation phase. During the scoping phase, the research teams will refine their research questions, verify their assumptions, and explore the feasibility of their evaluation designs.
Teachers have an important influence on pupils’ educational achievement. However, many schools in England are struggling to recruit and retain teachers, and schools with higher proportions of pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds are more likely to be affected by recruitment and retention challenges.
There is a widespread perception among teachers and school leaders that increasing the availability of flexible working (arrangements which allow employees to vary the amount, timing, or location of their work) could improve teacher retention. However, there is currently limited robust evidence to understand to what extent flexible working policies have an impact on teacher recruitment or retention and why. This project will help to fill this gap in the evidence base by researching how offsite PPA impacts on teachers.
This project is currently at the scoping phase. The aim of the scoping phase is to assess the feasibility of designing an impact evaluation that can produce causal evidence about the impact of implementing an offsite PPA policy. The scoping phase will explore:
- How an impact evaluation focusing on offsite PPA could be designed
- Whether such a trial is likely to be feasible and able to produce robust findings
- Factors impacting access to and uptake of offsite PPA in schools
- Barriers and enablers to supporting the provision of offsite PPA in schools
The scoping phase will be completed in Summer 2025. Once the scoping phase is finalised, this webpage will be updated.