A year on from the government’s Workload Challenge and a vast majority of school staff still say that their workload is unmanageable.
Almost 44,000 teachers responded to education secretary Nicky Morgan’s Workload Challenge last year, highlighting the key issues that led to unmanageable workload problems within the profession.
High on the list of workload drivers were data-recording, excessive marking, the amount and detail of lesson planning that is required, and the number of new government initiatives and policy changes.
However, at the time, the government’s response to its own findings was criticised by teaching unions for lacking “tangible” action.
Now, the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) has published the findings of new research one year on from the launch of the Workload Challenge showing that nothing has changed.
Involving 2,300 school staff, it reveals that 81 per cent of teachers consider their workload to be “unmanageable”, while a similar proportion of all school staff are considering leaving the profession because of workload.
The study finds that government policy continues to play a key part in causing workload problems, with 91 per cent of respondents saying that having fewer changes to the curriculum would help to ease workload issues.
The other most significant ways to reduce workload, according to school staff, would be cutting admin such as photocopying (cited by 79 per cent), having an appraisal objective to reduce workload (78 per cent), having a school work-life balance policy (77 per cent), fewer meetings (75 per cent), being able to choose how and how often to mark (74 per cent), and better programmes for data entry and analysis (70 per cent).
The respondents said that while some of these problem tasks do support pupils, such as marking and lesson-planning, they can become problematic when they have to be done “too frequently or in a particular way”.
One head of department at a secondary school in York told researchers: “The only way I cope is by working nearly every night and weekend. I have very little personal time in term time and spend loads of time in holidays doing planning.”
Meanwhile, a teacher at an academy in Kettering said: “I am so lucky to have found a job which I actually love. I want to be a teacher but I don’t want to kill myself for it. The workload would not even be such an issue if it was actually making me a better teacher, but it’s not. The workload, totally pointless tasks and the constant scrutiny have made me less able to make time for students who deserve it.”
The Workload Challenge itself reported similar causes of high workload. These included:
- Recording, inputting, monitoring and analysing data: cited by 56 per cent of the 44,000 respondents.
- Excessive/depth of marking, including the detail and frequency required: 53 per cent.
- Lesson/weekly planning, including the detail and frequency required: 38 per cent.
- Basic administrative and support tasks: 37 per cent.
- Staff meetings: 26 per cent.
- Reporting on pupil progress: 24 per cent.
- Pupil targets – setting/continual review: 21 per cent.
- Implementing new initiatives/curriculum and qualification change: 20 per cent.
The government’s response included a pledge to give schools a “minimum lead-in time for significant accountability, curriculum and qualification changes” and commitments by Ofsted to make its inspection handbook “shorter and simpler” from 2016 onwards.
At the time, Dr Mary Bousted, general secretary of the ATL, said that teachers were “bitterly disappointed” at the outcome of the Workload Challenge.
The ATL has now launched two initiatives to try and tackle the problems itself. Its About Time campaign is aimed at raising awareness of the impact of workload, identifying the tasks that are the “most problematic” and finding and sharing practical solutions.
And its new Workload Tracker allows staff to plot what they spend time on so they can identify the most time-consuming tasks and perhaps see where they could do things differently.
Dr Bousted said: “A year on from the government’s Workload Challenge and it seems little has improved for school staff. Our survey shows eight in 10 teachers and senior leaders still think their workload is unmanageable, and many others say their workload is only manageable if they work late every evening and at weekends.
“Teachers, support staff and school managers expect they will have to work hard and a heavy workload and stress are nothing new. But the current situation is hugely damaging and unsustainable. The excessive workload is damaging teachers’ health, making many want to leave the profession and means they are often exhausted in class.
“The government needs to acknowledge it is responsible for much of the current workload because staff have to keep re-planning what they are doing to keep up with changes to the curriculum.
“The cruel irony is much of the work school staff are doing is not making them better teachers or improving children’s education – it is photocopying, preparing resources and data analysis.”
For more on the ATL’s About Time campaign, visit www.atl.org.uk/abouttime
For the workload tracker, go to www.atl.org.uk/workloadtracker