TEACHERS have called for school staff to be given career breaks to avoid burnout.

The demand comes at a time when schools are struggling with staff shortages and many teachers feel overworked.

Teaching unions are also lobbying for a 10 per cent pay increase to make up for a decade when salaries have fallen behind previous levels.

Read more: Workload, stress and low pay blamed for teacher exodus

While in the short term sabbaticals would be hard to introduce because of the lack of supply staff unions argue they would save money in the long term by reducing early retirement.

The call comes as Westminster Education Secretary Damian Hinds announced a £5 million sabbatical pilot to give teachers in England the chance to do research, work in industry or help develop education policies.

Seamus Searson, general secretary of the Scottish Secondary Teachers’ Association, said sabbaticals would help prolong teachers’ careers.

He said: “Sabbaticals are a good thing and have been used in other parts of the UK as way of increasing the contribution of the teacher and as a retention measure.

“Unfortunately, the system in Scotland expects all teachers to do a large amount of training in addition to the day job which prevents many from developing themselves in the way they could if they had more time.

“We need to get to the stage where sabbaticals are seen as a way of developing and retaining teachers because everyone benefits from teachers who are given a new challenge away from the school and then return to schools enthused.”

Sabbaticals were first discussed in Scotland as part of the McCrone committee report on the future of the profession published in 2000.

The report said: “The opportunity for a term’s break, say once in every ten years of a teacher’s career, could - if used for well-focused research or other professional development - be of great value, not only in updating skills, but in providing much needed refreshment in the course of what can be a stressful and at times repetitive career.

“Such breaks would have to be properly planned and organised, with the proposed activity on which time was to be spent approved by the headteacher.

Read more: Workload, stress and pay blamed for teacher exodus

“But it could, for example, provide opportunity not only for a course leading to a qualification, but for language teachers to have experience in a school abroad, and for those in more technical subjects to update their knowledge outside the school environment.”

The committee noted that such breaks would be expensive because additional teaching resources would be required to cover them, but would reap rewards in the longer term because school staff would be less likely to suffer problems of burn-out that could necessitate early retirement.

The pilot in England has been welcomed by the National Association of Head Teachers.

Kevin Baskill, the union’s London regional secretary, said: “It seems like a simple idea, but I think it would help to change the culture, and to value the profession.

“Think of the money that’s spent on television adverts, teacher training, even adverts on the sides of roads now. There’s a desperation to get new teachers.

“We ought to be thinking about how we keep the talent in teaching.”

He said that while money was important, teachers also needed to feel valued and that there was “someone looking after them”.

He suggested that money used for teacher training and supply budgets could be invested into a sabbatical system, with school staff, including headteachers, given the chance to take time out at different stages of their career.