1,265 Hours Isn't A Limit: The Directed Time Ceiling Misquoted

So, uh, this is a real document and the truth is most people working in the building have probably only ever seen exactly one page of it. Yeah. Just the one. Right. It's that one specific page that goes up on the wall in September, the directed time calendar. You're the one is they got the inset days on it. It has got the parents evenings on it. And, uh, down at the very bottom of the last column, there is a specific number. 1,265. Exactly. 1,265. And underneath that number, there is usually something printed along the lines of hours remaining not.

Right. Which, I mean, leads us straight to the central dilemma because everybody looks at that calendar, they look at that number and they ask the exact same question. So why am I still working on Sunday night? This is the education commute. So today we are looking for the answer to that Sunday night question. We are going to go through the actual text, the rules that dictate exactly who controls your time. Yeah, because I am sitting in the chair of the person that calendar lands on, the classroom teacher.

And I will be completely honest with you. I have always half assumed that number at the bottom of the page was like some kind of promise about my working week. Well, it isn't. I have the actual document open right in front of me. and the answer to your Sunday night question is written down in it, specifically in a paragraph that almost nobody ever quotes. Okay. But before we get into anything else, we need to establish exactly which document we are looking at and how current it is.

Right. What is the actual document? It is the school teacher's pay and conditions document directly from the Department for Education. And the one that is operative right now is the 2025 edition. Okay. It has been valid from the 1st of September, 2025. Wait, hold on. 2025. We are currently in the second week of the 2026 school year. We are. But I checked the government page this week and it lists 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025. There is no 2026 edition listed on it at all. Oh, wow.

Yeah, so the 2025 document is the one currently in force. I would rather tell you that than try to quote from a document that simply does not exist yet. That is noted. And I want to get one more scoping thing out of the way before we dive into the text because I know half our listeners are going to be shouting this at the windscreen right now. Let me guess. Academies. Yes, academies. Just to be absolutely clear on this point, this document automatically applies to maintain schools.

Right. If you are a listener working in an academy, this document only applies if your own specific contract adopts it. Most of them do adopt it, but not all of them. Yeah, that's true. If you're in an academy, the sentence that actually governs your workload is in your own contract, not automatically in this document from the Department for Education. That is a crucial distinction. Right, so let's look at that number again. 1,265. What is it, actually? Yeah, what does it say? Let me read paragraph 51.5 to you.

It states that a full-time teacher must be available to perform such duties at such times and such places as may be specified for 1,265 hours. Those hours to be allocated reasonably throughout those days. Let me pull out that phrasing. Available to perform such duties as may be specified. That word specified feels important. It is the phrase that matters most. 1,265 is the exact quantity of time your employer may direct. Right. It is the amount of time they may tell you exactly where to be and exactly what to do.

It is a ceiling on instruction. What about the days themselves? Like, how does the document handle those? For that, we look at paragraph 51.2. It specifies 195 days available for work. Out of those, 190 must be days on which the teacher may be required to teach pupils and perform other duties. The remaining five must be days on which the teacher may only be required to perform other duties. Oh, so those remaining five days, those are the inset days. Exactly. Exactly. Those five are the days where you can be required to be there, but you cannot be required to teach.

And it is important to note what the text does not say here. What's that? It does not say those five days have to be whole days, and it does not say they have to be placed at the start of the term. Okay, so that establishes the days and the directed hours. Now, let's come back to the Sunday night question. If my employer has used up my hours, why am I working on a Sunday night? This is where we need to read paragraph 51.7, and I will immediately follow it with paragraph I want to read these slowly because they are the paragraphs the entire staff room argument turns on.

Paragraph 51.7. In addition to the hours, a teacher is required to be available for work. A teacher must work such reasonable additional hours as may be necessary to enable the effective discharge of the teacher's professional duties. Now, immediately to paragraph 51.8, the employer must not determine how many of the additional hours referred to in paragraph 51.7 must be worked or when these hours must be worked. I need to stop and look at that first part. In addition to, so the marking, the planning, writing the reports, all of that Sunday night work is not inside the 1,265 hours?

No, it isn't. It is an entirely second category. And as the document clearly says in paragraph 51.7, you must do it. But the very next paragraph, paragraph 51.8, explicitly forbids the employer from determining how many of those additional hours must be worked or when they must be worked. Precisely. The uncapped part of the job is explicitly the unschedulable part. Nobody can require the marking to happen specifically on a Sunday. Right. Nobody can require it to take four hours rather than two hours. The professional judgement about how that happens and when it happens is explicitly protected by that pairing of paragraphs.

That is a genuinely different reading at my Sunday night. It means there's a massive distinction between being told, we're doing a compulsory twilight for planning, and just being told, please plan. They are completely different things under this document. If a task is specified, if it has a set time, a set place, and a set activity, then it is directed. And if it is directed, it comes directly out of the 1,265 hours. But if the instruction is simply a general expectation to do your job well, it falls under paragraph 51.

7. Right. And because of paragraph 51.8, it simply cannot be timetabled. I need to push back on this though, because this all sounds very tidy on paper. But in reality, I have never once seen anybody produce this document in a real conversation about workload. That is a fair pushback. And here is my honest concession about this document. I can tell you exactly what the document says. I cannot tell you what happens in your school if you cite it. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, the document has absolutely nothing to say about that either.

It contains no process. It contains no remedy. There is no complaints route built in. Most workload, simply the reality of the job being bigger than the hours. And a single paragraph cannot fix that reality. It is a statement of what may be required, not a mechanism for when someone requires more. So, what is the point of knowing it? What it does is tell you which arguments are actually available to you. That is worth knowing before you find yourself in the middle of the argument. Fair enough.

So what else is in there that people generally don't know about? Well let's run through the lesser known protections. First, paragraph 51.12, time spent on your break or traveling to and from work does not count towards the hours. Meaning the lunch break isn't quietly filling up the 1,265 hours. It is not. Next is paragraph 52.1. No teacher may be required to work on any Saturday, Sunday, or public holiday unless their contract of employment expressly provides for this. Unless expressly provided in their contract. So if there's a Saturday open day, that is a contractual question.

Then there is paragraph 52.2, and this is remarkably direct. No teacher may be required under their contract of employment as a teacher to undertake midday supervision. Wait, really? It doesn't say should not be required. It says may not be required. It may not. Following that is paragraph 52.3. This states that a teacher required to be available for more than one session in a day must be allowed one break of reasonable length either between school sessions or between the hours of 12 noon and 2 o'clock. But right to one break of reasonable length?

Yes. And what about planning time? Because planning, preparation, and assessment time is the one protection people actually do tend to know about. Yeah, that is covered in paragraph 52.5. It states that all teachers who teach pupils are entitled to reasonable periods of planning, preparation, and assessment time. Right. Crucially, it says this time must amount to not less than 10% of the teachers' timetable teaching time. Not less than 10% of the teachers' timetable teaching time. Not of the whole working week, but of timetable teaching time. That is a smaller base than a lot of people assume, and it is definitely worth working out for yourself once.

Right. And now we need to cover the exclusions because a lot of the people listening to this show aren't classroom teachers. We have to look at paragraph 51.4. What does it say? It explicitly excludes head teachers, deputy head teachers, assistant head teachers, and teachers on the leading practitioner range, or anyone on an acting allowance for leadership duties. Okay. None of paragraph 51.2 through 51.12 applies to them. Wait, so the 1,265 hours limit, the 195 days, the break in travel rules. Yeah. None of it applies if you were in leadership.

None of it. And it is not an oversight in the text. It is explicitly written down. And what about the other group this document doesn't speak for? Staff who aren't teachers at all. Exactly. This is the school teachers pay and conditions document. It does not cover teaching assistants. It does not cover office staff. It does not cover site staff and it does not cover midday supervisors. Their hours live in their own individual contracts and absolutely nothing in this document applies to them. Which really matters to mention on a show that is listened to by the whole staff.

I'd rather say it clearly than let anyone drive away believing they have a protection they don't actually have. So let's apply this to three different rooms to see how it works in practice. First, in a primary setting. Let's say there's a 15-minute weekly briefing that isn't on the calendar. If that happens every week for 39 weeks, that is directed time. If it isn't on the calendar, then the calendar is an error. Right, and in a secondary school setting, consider the Saturday open day, results morning, or revision session as we established with paragraph 52.

1. That makes it a contractual question. Yeah. The honest version of reality is that most people say yes to those willingly. But willingly and required are very different words. And only one of those words is in this document. And in a specialist setting, consider the multi-agency meeting that lands at four o'clock in the afternoon simply because that is the only time the health colleague is free. Right. That is directed time if you are required to be there. The document doesn't say you shouldn't do it just says you have to count it.

Here's the question for the staff room. Next time you're on break, ask whoever is standing next to the kettle, do you actually know what your 10% of timetable teaching time equates to in periods? And here is the governor question. If a governor asked to see this year's directed time calendar and then asked whether the weekly briefings, the parents evenings, and the Twilight's add up to the number at the bottom, would the arithmetic actually hold. That is answerable this term. And it doesn't have to be a confrontation.

A calendar that doesn't include a recurring meeting isn't usually a scandal. It is usually just an oversight. But it is exactly the sort of oversight that only gets found by someone actually adding it up. Let's summarise the core takeaways. The four things off the drive. One. 1,265 is the ceiling on directed time across 195 days, of which 190 may involve teaching. It is not a limit on the job. 2. Paragraph 51.7 says you must work reasonable additional hours beyond it, and paragraph 51.8 says your employer must not determine how many of those hours or when.

The uncapped part is also the unschedulable part. 3. The small print people never quote. Breaks and travel don't count. No Saturday, Sunday, or public holiday unless your contract says so. Midday supervision may not be required. a break of reasonable length on any day with more than one session, and PPA of not less than 10% of timetable teaching time. And none of the document applies to staff who aren't teachers. Check which of those you are before you rely on any of it. Right, and note the current edition is 2025.

Safe trip in. See you at the gates.