Welcome Flexible Working Ambassador School Homepage

We believe that IVC has been chosen to be a Flexible Working Ambassador school on the strength of its policies, practices and culture that supports flexible working (FW) across our management, teaching and non-teaching positions.

IVC has a proactive approach and recognises that FW supports employee work-life balance, raises morale, reduces absenteeism and improves our use, diversity and retention of staff as well as student experience.

Over the last three years, we have used ‘Investors in People’ along with workload feedback for structural staffing changes and improvements to our FW conditions and the impact on staff wellbeing has been clear.

Absence rates have significantly improved with two thirds fewer absence days; staff retention has been enhanced with 70% fewer staff leaving. Students at IVC have also benefited as staff productivity has improved leading to consistently high pupil outcomes through broadening of the curriculum and improving the student experience resulting in IVCs recognition as the Sunday Times State School of the Year for East Anglia 2019 and 2020.

Furthermore, IVC is well suited to be a Flexible Working Ambassador School on account of its strong reputation and established relationships with a wide network of schools, Trusts forums/committees providing us with an excellent network of influence across the region.  In addition to this, IVC has extensive experience in managing multi-school projects across a large area.

IVC is ideally placed to increase awareness of the different types of flexible working, be a flexible working champion and influencer for other schools, providing practical support to help schools deploy their staff effectively and efficiently.  This should in turn go on to improve retention rates in schools.  We will share our own learning and practical experience of flexible working through a mixture of events, direct support and other forums.

The long term goals are to

➤ increasing understanding of different types of flexible working;

➤ being an influencer for other schools (through hosting virtual events, virtual networks, including supporting DfE with external events);

➤ providing practical support to schools e.g. peer support, advising and assisting with model flexible working policy documents.

Our long-term objectives for Teacher Flexible Working are

➤ to decrease the number of teachers citing lack of flexible working as their reason for leaving the profession;

➤ to increase the quantity and range of flexible working opportunities, and the culture in which they are offered; and

➤ to increase the number of teachers and leaders feeling confident to request flexible working, and leaders feeling confident in approving it