The STPCD recognises that meetings can be detrimental to a teacher’s work/life balance.

All after-school meetings should appear on the year’s calendar of events planned before the commencement of each academic year, as required by the STPCD, and that no new meetings are called, except in a genuine emergency.

Class teachers should not be called upon to attend more than one management-organised meeting a week, that all meetings are justifiable and that where there is insufficient business, meetings are cancelled.

No after-school meeting should take place in a week during which there is a parent consultation meeting planned;

Every after-school meeting has a published starting and finishing time (no longer than one hour) and that these are adhered to.

All meetings should be counted against the 1,265 hours of directed time within 195 days;

All meetings should have a published agenda, circulated in sufficient time to enable teachers to participate effectively in the business.

Meetings are confined to proper business. For example, no staff or department meeting should be engaged in determining teachers’ conditions of service, including matters such as redundancy;

A reasonable balance should be struck between the requirement for teachers to attend meetings and their other professional and domestic commitments. Particular attention should be paid to the STPCD provisions and guidance relating to part-time teachers in this respect.

Part-time teachers should not have a greater proportion of their directed time allocated outside of their normal sessions than full-time teachers.

These conditions of service provisions are now subject to NASUWT national action instructions.