School in Buckinghamshire to launch Innovative Staff Well-being Scheme

A school in Buckinghamshire is set to launch an Innovative Staff Well-being Scheme.

The Highcrest Academy, Hatters Lane, High Wycombe are due to launch an innovative new scheme to counter the national recruitment crisis in education, whilst also supporting the well-being of staff.

The scheme will mean that staff work nine days across a fortnight and are able to use the 10th day to either rest or to carry out work that would usually have to be completed during evenings, weekends or holidays, interrupting important family time.

Mr. Burke, Principal at The Highcrest Academy, said: ‘At Highcrest we are committed to the wellbeing and mental health of our staff and understand the limitations that working in education can place on individuals in terms of time. To this end, we are always looking for ways to improve working conditions and to offer our staff incentives that are not always available in education

We all hear a lot about the long holidays, but we don’t hear as much about the fact that many staff use these holidays, and indeed their weekends, to complete marking and other administrative work.

Therefore, to help our staff manage this ever-increasing workload, we are implementing a 9-day working fortnight for all staff within the academy. The premise of the scheme is simple, our staff will work nine days but be paid for ten, using the 10th day to ‘reset’, thus giving them the opportunity to manage their work-life balance more effectively.

It was important to us that provision for our students was not negatively impacted by this scheme, and their school day will remain exactly the same.‘

The school timetable has been completely restructured to enable the scheme to be implemented. However, student timings will remain the same and they will still attend school for the same amount of time across an academic year.

*Source of information : Press release from The Highcrest Academy.