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Yuganov Konstantin/Shutterstock Will Scotland’s planned four-day week for teachers work? Published: December 9, 2025 5.21pm GMT Beng Huat See, Daniel Wheatley, University of Birmingham

Authors

Beng Huat See
Professor of Education Research, School of Education, University of Birmingham
Daniel Wheatley
Reader in Business and Labour Economics, University of Birmingham

Disclosure statement

Beng Huat See receives funding from Economic and Social Research Council. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a Fellow of the Wolfson Research Institute for Health and Wellbeing

Daniel Wheatley is an Academic Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, Fellow of the Regional Studies Association and member of the Association for Heterodox Economics and British Sociological Association.

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University of Birmingham provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation UK.

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DOI

https://doi.org/10.64628/AB.r95t3hnps

https://theconversation.com/will-scotlands-planned-four-day-week-for-teachers-work-271166 https://theconversation.com/will-scotlands-planned-four-day-week-for-teachers-work-271166 Link copied Share article

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The Scottish government recently announced plans to pilot a four-day school week. The proposal comes amid growing concerns about teacher supply and wellbeing.

Teaching remains one of the most stressful occupations in the UK, with stress, exhaustion and burnout consistently cited as major reasons for staff leaving the profession. Creating supportive cultures and cost-effective wellbeing strategies therefore remains a key challenge for school leaders.

A “true” four-day work week, as advocated for by the Four-Day Week Foundation, involves the meaningful reduction of working time as well as days. This means that working time will typically be reduced to 28-32 hours per week worked over four days. Importantly, this change is made without a reduction in pay and with expectations that overall productivity levels are maintained.

Trials across 61 UK organisations show that four-day work weeks, when implemented as genuine working-time reductions, can improve work-life balance, reduce stress and cut employee absence. Research from Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the UK and the USA also report positive effects on wellbeing, job satisfaction and retention from adoption of the four-day work week. These studies also suggest that working-time reductions do not harm productivity.

But teaching still lags behind the wider workforce on flexible working. Many schools struggle to accommodate it. Unlike many office-based roles, schools must maintain fixed timetables, ensure pupil supervision and meet staffing ratios, which limits flexibility.

The proposal by the Scottish government differs from a “true” four-day week in that it does not reduce teachers’ overall hours but redistributes them. Teachers would work part of their planning, preparation and assessment time off-site, with only four days used for teaching.

The proposal would allow a day for assessment, planning and other tasks. NuPenDekDee/Shutterstock

Research by one of us (Daniel Wheatley, with colleagues at the University of Birmingham) from the Four-Day Work Week Project offers useful insights from work models that do not involve reductions in hours. We have found that models of the four-day work week where hours are not reduced, and ones where working on the fifth day remains in place, are linked to high work intensity and lesser practical benefits: employees are not able to disconnect from work fully.

However, research by one of us (Beng Huat See, with colleagues at Durham University and the University of Birmingham) which has examined 18 countries, indicates that the key factor contributing to stress is not the statutory working hours, but the amount of classroom contact time. Countries where teachers have high overall hours but fewer teaching hours report fewer shortages. This suggests that the most exhausting element of teaching is the intensity of instructing and managing pupils, rather than administrative or preparatory tasks.

If reducing contact hours helps alleviate stress, then a four-day teaching week, or models that redistribute teaching time such as the proposal in Scotland, could potentially improve wellbeing and retention.

Although four-day work weeks have been adopted in some international school systems, evidence of impacts on wellbeing, retention and pupil outcomes remains limited. Most existing research has been based on people’s perceptions of the scheme rather than measurable outcomes. These could include comparing absentee rates, turnover rates of teachers and student outcomes before and after the introduction of flexible working.

The Scottish pilot therefore offers an important opportunity to generate robust evidence. In England, the Education Endowment Foundation, a research charity funded by the government, is also trialling a nine-day working fortnight and an off-site planning, preparation and assessment model, but results are not yet available.

Flexible working in practice

Whether flexible working hours are feasible in practice depends on several factors. Large academy trusts often find it easier to implement this kind of working because they can deploy staff across multiple sites, allowing less rigid timetabling than a single school can manage. Primary schools also have more capacity for flexible models because they rely less on specialist subject teaching.

Cultural change is as important as logistical change. Research from non-profit Timewise emphasises that supportive leadership is crucial. Without it, flexible arrangements remain inconsistent or inaccessible. This means that implementing a four-day week is not a simple organisational tweak.

A four-day week is not a quick fix, then, but it may be worth trying.

The Scottish government’s pilot is an ambitious step that reflects a growing recognition of the need to address teacher workload. But successful implementation will require sufficient staffing and resourcing, and a shift in leadership practice and school cultures.

Reducing the intensity of classroom contact time may be crucial to tackling stress and preventing burnout. The existing evidence base does present a cautionary tale in that adoption of work models that do not involve a meaningful reduction in working time have so far been much less successful. Nevertheless, the Scottish pilot offers a rare opportunity to test whether rethinking working patterns can improve teacher wellbeing and retention.

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Four-day week
UK Schools
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