Vickie Johnson was a deputy headteacher at a small primary school in Greater Manchester working exhausting 60-hour weeks when she became pregnant with her son. “I had been leaving the house so early and getting back late, as well as working weekends and evenings at home,” she says. “I realised I wouldn’t ever see my baby and that wasn’t OK.”
Negotiating her return to school after maternity leave when her son was four months old, Johnson tried asking for a switch to two-and-a-half days a week. Instead, she hit the brick wall that is still standard in many schools.
