Campaigners have urged Bridget Phillipson to give teachers in England and Wales a day out of school every week with no loss of pay. The 4 Day Week Foundation believes that shorter working weeks can reduce burnout, improve productivity and support better work-life balance. What’s not to like about that?

Quite a lot, actually. The aim is not to introduce three-day weekends but allow teachers to work from home one day in every five. Teachers like me certainly need time to plan schemes of work, prepare lessons, mark our pupils’ work, and deal with the next crisis. We need more of it during the school day. But that does not seem to be the plan.

James Reeves, the 4 Day Week Foundation’s campaign manager, explained that a four-day week, ‘isn’t about doing less, it’s about working smarter’. Do

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