Workload in the education profession is one of the factors that must be addressed to help retain our staff and ensure we have a happy, and health workforce. So, what are the causes of workload? What can be done to reduce it? Are you taking any steps to help reduce the workload of your staff? Here, ASCL members share their views.

Reducing workload

Meaningful, manageable and motivating

We have adopted the mantra of the DfE’s 2016 report on workload that ‘marking should be meaningful, manageable and motivating’ as the basis for our whole-school feedback policy, signalling our commitment to reduce workload.

We asked colleagues to mark only specific pieces of work, avoid ‘ticking and flicking’ (which has little discernible impact) and to increase the use of student self and peer assessment, building DIRT (Directed Improvement and Reflection Time) into lessons to ensure that students utilise the feedback given.

Whole-class marking sheets, introduced by our head of English and now used widely across the school, summarising strengths and areas for improvement across a class, have dramatically reduced the time it takes to mark a set of books – a moment so revelatory for me the first time I used it that I leapt down the corridor excitedly telling everyone I met.

Kate Claydon
Deputy Headteacher, Worthing High School, Worthing, West Sussex

Remove unnecessary tasks

As school leaders, it’s important that we manage our hard working and dedicated teams in an appropriate way to provide colleagues with an appropriate work–life balance.

I’m proud to lead a team of staff who really want to go the extra mile to do the very best for our students. However, we also try to ensure that staff aren’t asked to carry out unnecessary or often unproductive tasks. Examples include ensuring that assessment requirements are appropriate and proportionate with sensible marking policies, and data collections.

We employ a data analyst to avoid burdensome and repetitive work for teachers. We also ensure meetings don’t take place when key events such as parents’ evenings are taking place, and our CPD model maximises time for a bespoke offer to individual staff. A culture of sharing resources and sharing best practice exists in the school that also helps to reduce workload. Our aim, at all times, is to provide the best possible education for all students in the school and set them up for the world of work. To ensure that this happens it is important that we ‘look after our own’ by addressing unnecessary workload so that our staff do what they do best – educate children.

Arwel Jones
Headteacher, Brentside High School, London

Increased pressures

The usual workload issues have been significantly increased in recent years by curriculum reforms forced by changes to exam specifications at both GCSE and A level; add to this the removal of levels at KS3, and staff are having to re-write courses, choose exam boards, teach new material and make assessments/predications in a ‘vacuum’ – that is, not really knowing what a grade 4 or 5 will actually look like.

Further stress is caused by the problems in recruiting suitably qualified teachers so that existing staff end up with more preparation to do to help non-specialists/ supply staff. And then, due to the inadequate funding of schools, leaders also have to look at ways of saving money (larger classes, cutting courses, reducing allowances and so forth), which increases workload all round.

At my school, all the SLT, including the head, teach beyond what is reasonable to reduce the workload for other staff. We have invested in software that speeds up tracking of progress and report writing, and we have instituted a clear marking policy so that expectations are clear for all. We also discuss Ofsted ‘myths’ to ensure no one demands what is not required.

(Name and details supplied)

Focus on key areas

In our school, we’ve focused on three areas to reduce teacher workload and improve wellbeing:

Planning: We’ve disaggregated our INSET to arrange for collaborative planning time within each month of the school calendar. Heads of departments are able to group colleagues collectively to focus on a specific series of lessons, and they can share the work involved to plan and prepare these.

Marking: We’ve introduced a new marking policy connected to our home learning policy that is personalised to each department and bespoke to different year groups. This allows departments to ensure that the policy reflects what is appropriate for them and what works within their planning and assessment needs.

Assessment: We’ve reduced our number of data collection points throughout each key stage and brought in new online software (Go4Schools) that enables data collection as part of a teacher’s ‘normal’ electronic markbook records, reducing the time previously needed to enter data for analysis.

Pepe DiIasio
Headteacher, Wales High School, Sheffield, South Yorkshire

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