Daniel Kebede, general secretary of Britain’s largest teachers’ union, has urged schools to allow full-time teachers one day a week to work from home for marking and planning and to introduce staggered start and finish times, saying the measures would help ease chronic recruitment and retention problems.

Kebede, a former primary school teacher who leads the National Education Union (NEU) — which represents more than half a million members — set out the proposal in an interview with The Sunday Times, saying remote planning time and flexible timetabling would reduce unpaid overtime and burnout among teachers.

Teachers in England are currently permitted to ringfence about 10% of their working time for marking and preparation, but many say that provision is insufficient and that large amounts of work are completed out of hours. Government statistics and education surveys show the average full-time teacher works roughly 52 hours per week during term time, a workload Kebede and other union figures say is unsustainable.

"Staggered starts and finishes and remote planning time would make a real big difference," Kebede told the paper. "Does a physics teacher need to be in at 8am in the morning? Timetabling can allow for staggered starts and you just also just need the government and employers to trust that teachers are doing the work as necessary rather than being forced to be on site."

Kebede argued the measures would help keep experienced staff in classrooms. Citing international comparisons from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), he said teacher retention in the UK ranked poorly among 20 countries studied. OECD data show nearly one in 10 qualified teachers left the profession in 2022–23, and that 92% of those departures were resignations rather than retirements — a much higher resignation rate than in countries such as France, where only about 15% of departures were resignations.

"There are so many teachers leaving before retirement at the moment. Twelve years is long in the tooth now, which is mad isn't it? Schools are less forgiving places now for professionals, but also for children, and we've haemorrhaged the experience from our classrooms," Kebede said.

The NEU leader framed the proposals as part of a broader push to modernise working arrangements in education and to bring them closer to flexible practices increasingly commonplace in other sectors. He said allowing teachers to stagger their working day and to complete planning or marking from home would not reduce accountability but would acknowledge the realities of a profession where much of the work — including preparation, marking and report writing — often happens beyond scheduled contact time with pupils.

Kebede, who has described himself politically as a socialist, also used the interview to criticise the Reform UK party, calling it "far-right and racist" and warning it would be "a disaster for education" if it gained influence. His comments reflect ongoing political debate in Britain about education policy as parties seek to address shortages, pay, and workload in the sector ahead of future elections.

The union’s proposals add to a series of calls from teacher groups and some school leaders for changes to contractual arrangements, workload expectations and government funding to stem the flow of resignations. Education officials have previously said they are considering measures to support recruitment and retention but have not announced a nationwide policy to permit a regular work-from-home day for classroom teachers.

Any formal change to teachers’ working arrangements would require negotiation between unions, school employers and government, and could vary between local authorities and school types. Kebede’s proposals are likely to prompt discussion among headteachers, school governors and policymakers over how remote planning time could be scheduled without reducing pupil contact hours or disrupting school operations.

The NEU did not immediately respond to a request for further detail on how a weekly remote planning day would be implemented across different types of schools. Government education officials were not quoted in the interview, and the Department for Education has previously emphasised the importance of face-to-face teaching while acknowledging concerns about workload and staff retention.