Calculating a ‘Directed Time’ audit is not an exciting task like planning your school’s improvement priorities but it is one of those little things that highlights when schools are led effectively and efficiently.
‘Directed time audits can highlight when schools are led effectively and efficiently’
Most teachers are contracted to work 1265hours over the course of the academic year. This generally takes place over 190days of teaching with the pupils and then five Inset days, which can be placed, were appropriate or disaggregated. At this stage of the year it is a good idea to have completed an audit of how you are using directed time to make sure that you are not using too much or too little. You may decide as part of your well-being policy to use less directed time so that teachers have more time for planning, assessment and reporting.
What will you read about?
In this blog we will look at how you can develop a spreadsheet to track your allocation of directed time and to make sure that you are remaining in the 1265 limit.
‘No Silver Bullets 1.1: Day in, day out school improvement,’ written by Paul K Ainsworth is now available. This book contains 108 strategies which leaders have successfully used in primary and secondary schools to make the difference to their pupils.
The five steps
It is best to develop a spreadsheet so if you make little changes, you can see the impact this has on the time that you have allocated. Below is a guide to constructing a relatively simple model of using directed time.
If you would like a copy of the spreadsheet, then please copy and paste this tweet and send it.
The magic 1265: Five steps to determine your 1265 audit by @pkainsworth. Please could you send me a copy of the spreadsheet from your blog: http://www.paulkainsworth.wordpress.com/2019/09/12/the-magic-1265-how-are-you-using-your-directed-time/
Step 1: Teaching Days
How long is your school day? How early do you expect teachers to be in school and what is the earliest time that they are allowed to leave? Do you say that break time is directed time so that if it is a wet day, you can ask all your teachers to supervise the children?
For instance the pupils are in school from 8:45am to 3:15pm, which is 6.5hours. The staff and pupils have a 45minute lunch break. This is now 5.75hours of directed time. You have made break time directed time so this is already included. You also expect teachers to be available in school from 8:30am up till 3:30pm, this is a further 30minutes or half an hour, which gives a total of 6.25hours. (It can be easier to work in decimals rather than minutes! However there is some help at the end if you wish to work in hours and minutes.)
| Time | Occasions | Total | Running Total | |
| School Day | 6.25hours | 190 | 1187.5hours | 1187.5 |
[If you want to use formulas in excel then the formula in cell D2, the total column, is =sum(B2*C2) ]
‘No Silver Bullets 2.0: Heart and Soul of School Improvement’ is published on Monday the 4th March – A guide for your school improvement journey.
Step 2: INSET Days
You have calendared 5 teaching days, which will run from 9am till 2:30pm with a 30minute lunch break. This is 5 hours of directed time for each.
| Time | Occasions | Total | Running Total | |
| School Day | 6.25hours | 190 | 1187.5 | 1187.5 |
| INSET Day | 5hours | 5 | 25 | 1212.5 |
[The formula for cell E3 the running total is either =sum(D2+D3) or =sum(D2:D3) ]
Step 3: Evening Events
There are 38 weeks in the year. There are 2 weeks with parent’s evenings, which last from 4pm till 6:30pm. You may think this is 2.5 hours of directed time, however 3:30pm till 4pm is classed as ‘trapped time’. Teachers cannot reasonably use this for anything else so in total it counts for 3 hours of directed time. In addition there is an open evening for which you use the same timings. Finally there is also a year 6 ‘Leavers Assembly’ and a ‘Christingle Service’. These are from 6pm till 7:30pm. 3:30pm till 6pm is not classed a ‘trapped time’ so these events account for 1.5hours each. In total there are five evening events.
| Time | Occasions | Total | Running Total | |
| School Day | 6.25hours | 190 | 1187.5 | 1187.5 |
| INSET Day | 5hours | 5 | 25 | 1212.5 |
| Parents Evenings | 3hours | 2 | 6 | 1218.5 |
| Open Evening | 3hours | 1 | 3 | 1221.5 |
| Leavers Assembly | 1.5 hours | 1 | 1.5 | 1223 |
| Christingle | 1.5hours | 1 | 1.5 | 1224.5 |
Step 4: Meetings
After those evening events, for every other week of the year, a total of 33weeks, you decide to place a one-hour meeting. Remember they need to start at 3:30pm to avoid the risk of complaints of ‘trapped time’. You may not have a formal meeting each week depending on your school’s needs but the time is allocated and timetabled.
| Time | Occasions | Total | Running Total | |
| School Day | 6.25hours | 190 | 1187.5 | 1187.5 |
| INSET Day | 5hours | 5 | 25 | 1212.5 |
| Parents Evenings | 3hours | 2 | 6 | 1218.5 |
| Open Evening | 3hours | 1 | 3 | 1221.5 |
| Leavers Assembly | 1.5 hours | 1 | 1.5 | 1223 |
| Christingle | 1.5hours | 1 | 1.5 | 1224.5 |
| Staff Meetings | 1hour | 33 | 33 | 1257.5 |
This gives a total of 1257.5hours so is less than the 1265 directed hours. Some schools will calculate it so that it does equal exactly 1265. However other schools will not allocate all the time
Step 5: Disaggregated Training Days
You may have more complicated structures if training days are disaggregated. On this model, each training day is worth 5hours, so if you change that into twilights, a 3:30pm to 5:30pm training session, you would need to timetable five of them in over the year to replace one training day.
(Geek tip: If you want to work in hours and minutes, e.g. rather than 6.5hours you use 6hr30minutes. You have to format the cells differently so you would type 06:30:00 and use the format [h]:mm:ss. To do this highlight the cells – right click so a menu appears– left click ‘format cells’ – left click ‘custom’ – scroll down and select [h]:mm:ss)
Next steps:
Now you have read this blog why not share it with your Senior Leadership Team. You can then discuss the following prompts to help determine your next steps.
- Has a 1265 audit been completed for this year? If not can a colleague produce the spreadsheet for this year.
- Plan your calendar to consider the different events that you wish to your teaching staff to participate in.
- Try and be creative too, can some of the pieces of work be completed at a time and location of colleagues choosing but you allocate the time. For example many schools are using National Online College training for safeguarding. You may allocate time for this but it is completed remotely.
- Complete a 1265 audit of your calendar.
- Once the audit is less than 1265hours, share this with your teaching staff.
- Read the sequel blog about you can develop a more flexible approach to utlising your 1265 hours of directed time
Further reading:
Directed time and how to tackle workload in your school – NEU
Advice on developing directed time budgets – ASCL
About the Author
Paul K Ainsworth is an experienced system leader and facilitator. He has supported many schools and leaders that have been in difficult positions which they then have been able to recover from. ‘No Silver Bullets: Day in, day out school improvement’ was published in February 2021, republished in September 2022 and now contains 108 strategies for improving schools. The sequel ‘No Silver Bullets 2.0: Heart and Soul of School Improvement’ was published in March 2024.
Day in, day out. Day in, day out. 