With school budgets as tight as ever, demands on teachers are increasing. Staff are working harder than ever and the statistics around the number of teachers quitting the chalkface are concerning. Indeed, in the last two years we have lost around 1 in 10 of all qualified teachers.
According to Education Support’s annual Teacher Wellbeing Index (2023), 78% of the school staff surveyed reported that they are stressed, 35% reported symptoms of burn-out in the last year, and 34% experienced symptoms of exhaustion. When broken down by role, the highest reported rates of these symptoms were for senior leaders where responsibility and accountability are the highest.
The index highlights symptoms of poor mental health: 55% of all the school leaders surveyed reported insomnia and difficulty sleeping, 52% reporting irritability and mood swings, 46% had experienced tearfulness, and 43% find difficulty in concentrating.
These figures are frightening, as in addition to being an education professional myself, I am also a parent to two school-aged children. I want all our children to be taught by teachers and leaders who are competent, compassionate, and energised. I do not want our children to be uninspired by a constant stream of temporary staff or by teachers and leaders who are stressed, exhausted, and on the edge of burn-out.
There are many aspects of working in schools that present challenges to the mental health and wellbeing of school staff: relationships with colleagues (especially senior leaders) and parents, pastoral concerns, managing difficult behaviour, the safeguarding of vulnerable students, inspections, and accountability for performance and outcomes to name a few.
However, one challenge continually faced by staff is the stress caused by high workload and poor work/life balance.
Many schools are now going to great lengths to minimise workload for staff. Strategies include centralised teaching resources, more sensible homework policies, and marking and feedback policies that emphasise the benefits of techniques such as whole-class feedback, live marking, and self-assessment.
In addition, we are seeing more sensible timetabling and calendar planning to avoid surges in workload and reduce pressure at pinch-points during the year.
Also, clearer school visions with regularly reviewed and shared goals help staff to prioritise. A visible staffing structure, where staff know their roles, responsibilities and the limit of their authority, also has benefits in preventing unnecessary time wasted in getting decisions made.
However, while school leadership teams have a responsibility for monitoring staff workload and for reviewing policies and procedures that support both effective practice and reasonable workload, every member of staff has responsibility for managing their own working habits too.
Whole-school strategies can have a significant impact on the culture and expectations placed on staff; however, they invariably don’t solve the years of individual bad habits, unhelpful thinking, or an inability to prioritise or delegate.
As such, this series of articles provides tips and ideas to help you improve your own situation or to help you support a member of your team who might be struggling to keep their head above water. I will address:
- Part 1: Breaking bad habits: This article
- Part 2: Overwhelm and time-management. Published November 20, 2025.
- Part 3: How to set your workload priorities: Published November 26, 2025.
- Part 4: Delegating effectively and confidently: Published December 2, 2025.
Typical issues affecting work/life balance
For the last five years, I have worked using coaching techniques to support staff to overcome their workload, wellbeing, and leadership challenges.
The benefit of one-to-one coaching is that it can provide the time and space to raise awareness of the key issues contributing to an individual’s high workload; it empowers staff to take responsibility and tackle some of the areas that are within their control.
However, the underlying issues and consequent solutions for each member of staff can vary significantly despite all working in the same setting.
Reflecting on the insights gained from these coaching conversations, the remainder of this article aims to help you consider your own workload and to think more constructively about how you might begin to address and overcome your challenges.
Do any of these scenarios sound familiar to you?
- Ali is working most days until late in the evening to get all his lessons planned to the highest possible standard. Although he is hopeful things will improve once everything is prepared properly, his work is placing significant strain on his personal life, with his partner and family complaining about the lack of quality time he spends with them.
- Brian is home by 5:30pm every day and never does any work during evenings and weekends. However, he is not managing behaviour well in school. His stress response to the constant conflict is exhausting him and he does not have the energy or the motivation to enjoy the things he loves outside of school.
- Christine is working all hours possible. This is driven by personal issues she is having outside of school, and she is using work as a distraction.
- Debbie is a new leader. She is over-compensating for her lack of confidence and perceived lack of effectiveness leading her team by spending more time on the paperwork side of her role where she feels she can do well.
- Elizabeth struggles to switch off from work. She is often ruminating and worrying over work issues during evenings and weekends, worried that she has missed something or has said or done something wrong. She is constantly checking her work email on her phone while watching television or socialising with friends.
- Abdul feels constantly overwhelmed with work and he rarely seems to get on top of all the tasks that pile up. He dreads opening his emails.
- Georgina suffers from “teacher guilt”. She is so used to working long hours that she is worried what “they” might think if she suddenly decides to work less at night or leaves school early.
- Jaz is a new leader and is reluctant to delegate to her team. She is aware that their workloads are already high. Also, she feels that others won’t do the work to the standard that she needs, so it’s probably less hassle to do everything herself and then at least she knows it will get done.
- Ken is a competent leader but simply doesn’t get time in the day to get anything done. He is constantly having to be responsive to student and staff issues, and the phone is constantly ringing. He loves his job, but he feels like he is making a choice between career and family and can’t see his situation as sustainable.
Raising your self-awareness
Take a moment to write down all the challenges and issues you are facing linked to your wellbeing and workload and effectiveness at work, no matter how big or small. Then ask yourself:
- If nothing changes, what happens?
- Which issue that you have identified is most important to you or is having the biggest impact on your wellbeing, or effectiveness at work, or at home?
- If I take the perspective of, for example, my partner, children, friends, line manager, headteacher, colleague, or students in my class, what would their thoughts or advice be?
- What do I want or need to change?
- Who or where can I access support from?
The Circle of Control
The challenges you have listed may be related to work, other individuals, or your personal life: these things all impact on your mental health and wellbeing at work.
A next step is to consider these challenges and think about the way you can respond to them. A useful tool to help you do this is the Circle of Control, Influence and Concern, developed by Stephen Covey in his popular book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (1989).
Draw yourself three concentric circles (like an archery board) on a large piece of paper. Label the innermost circle the “Circle of Control”, the middle circle the “Circle of Influence”, and the outer circle the “Circle of Concern”.
Select one challenge from your list at a time and place the elements of each challenge in the relevant circle.
- The Circle of Control identifies elements of the challenge that you have total control over.
- The Circle of Influence identifies elements of the challenge that you can’t control but which you can influence.
- The Circle of Concern are elements of the challenge that you can neither control nor influence, but which you are concerned about and need to accept and adapt too.
We might take work email as an example:
- I am concerned about (but cannot control or influence) the high number of emails I receive.
- I can control: When and where I choose to deal with my emails each day. I can unsubscribe from junk mail as it arrives. I can put an out-of-hours automated response indicating the hours I work and the likely timeframe for a response. I can control my mindset, attitude and response towards the issue and choose not to get stressed, taking a more pragmatic approach.
- I can influence: The working pattern and or expectations of others, with clear messaging about how I will respond to emails and modelling good working practices myself. I can share concerns about my workload with my line manager.
Do this for each of your challenges and then decide: Which action will you commit to making?
- Helen Webb is an accredited executive coach based in Leicester. She supports and develops school leaders so they can avoid burn-out, drive school improvement and get the best out of their team and themselves. Helen has more than 20 years’ experience in education as a science teacher, lead practitioner, PGCE and ECT mentor, ECF Lead and ECT induction tutor. She is a regular contributor to SecEd – find her previous articles via www.sec-ed.co.uk/authors/helen-webb. You can follow her @helenfwebb or find out more about her coaching services at https://helenwebbcoaching.co.uk/