Ed Sec looking to reduce teacher workload to avert strikes (England)

[noblegiraffe]

The Telegraph is reporting that Gillian Keegan has instructed the DfE to look into ways to reduce teacher workload to avoid strike action, because the government is still refusing to look at pay either this year or next.

Apparently teachers spend 22 hours a week teaching and 29 hours a week on non-teaching tasks according to research by Ofsted in 2019.

Suggestions to reduce this include 'websites that mark answers for you in maths' (Are there any maths departments without a subscription to one of these already?), and stopping trying to quantify progress for Ofsted.

Better suggestions would be:
Scrapping Ofsted graded inspections and replacing with safeguarding checks
Increasing the number of qualified teachers (improving pay would help here) to reduce workload for experienced teachers who have to plan/support/pick up after supply or unqualified teachers
Guaranteed minimum one PPA per day (this would need more teachers, see above)
Funding CAMHS and stopping expecting teachers to do this job
Funding SEN provision properly

www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/02/15/teachers-workloads-could-cut-bid-halt-strikes-schools/ (paywalled)

One PPA a day would be amazing. I just can’t hack full teaching days much longer.

Scrap meetings for the sake of meetings. Have them only when we actually need them.

Stop lunch and after school revision sessions. If you teach them well enough and they do quality homework, they shouldn’t be needed.

Stop the countless parents evenings - not the standard subject ones - I mean the ‘information’ evenings etc that are extra and pointless.

If they want to reduce workload they need to

-stop making classroom teachers responsible for attendance
-stop the demand for constant communication with parents
-stop emails out of hours with expected action within 24h
-increase pastoral and behavioural support (more non-teaching pastoral and behavioural staff)
-increase PRUs and special schools
-increase staff numbers and build more classrooms to reduce teacher:student ratio
-start making parents responsible for: grades, attendance, behaviour, equipment
-scrap uniform expectations
-update IT systems. My phone can do more than some of the hardware I have to work with.

Can I get a job with Keegan now?

Scrapping Ofsted would reduce alot of admin . My school gathers a ridiculous amount of data in such a convoluted way. I'm not convinced any of it is used or useful. I'm convinced though that we are stepped in blood do far, we can't return

One PPA a day ,more for staff with TLRs. Yes, please.

But none of this negates issues over real terms pay cuts.

I think genuinely reducing workload would cost the government more than the requested pay rise.

Yes, absolutely. One PPA per day for every teacher is a big outlay.

I wonder if she realises there are primary schools too? They are structured very differently. It's almost as if she has no clue...

Stop ridiculous curriculum deep dives in primary, where staff are expected to have a huge amount of responsibility for no extra pay and no extra time to do all the things that are expected.

You think?

The NEU is publishing replies from MPs on Twitter to letters from constituents. Some of them are supportive but nopes (North Norfolk), most are the standardised reply , and some are breathtakingly rude (glares at Caroline Nokes).

Deep dives are ridiculous.

More intervention/special units or classes for kids not achieving expectations at the end of key stages. Especially when going from ks2 to ks3 and they still can't bloody read, then they can't access the curriculum.

What do you mean by get rid of inclusion?

More units, PRUs and SSs opened.

It shouldn't be acceptable to be in a Y6 class with 3 kids on the p-scales, 5 working somewhere around Y3 and the rest ranging from needing challenged to just scraping by. The workload resourcing this is incredible.

We were just Ofsteded and pulled up for not having paperwork to show things were in place, despite inspectors physically seeing and agreeing such things were in place. That the subject leader had visually checked these was not enough - we needed a piece of paper to say she had done it. We are a tiny school where paperwork would literally only be looked at by the person who wrote it. It was so, so far from the message of Ofsted not adding to workload unnecessarily. I was genuinely quite shocked.

IMO, the only things that will make a meaningful difference on workload are more PPA and smaller class sizes. Most schools run teachers right up to their the timetables and if anything class sizes are getting bigger.

To provide any of this, you need more staff (more support staff would help too).

As people say, this will likely cost more than just offering a decent pay rise.

Btw, I know schools who have increased pastoral staff to try and reduce staff workload. I'm not convinced it helps.

This x 100. The Deep Dive format has been incredibly damaging to Primary schools and teachers.

Scrap Ofsted-that will help massively and save a fair few quid. It would also help with retention and recruitment as I can think of a number of ex-colleagues who would happily return.

I can’t think of anything else that would have any significant or measurable impact on workload. Gillian Keegan just wants teachers to shut up and go away and thinks saying unsubstantiated bollocks like this will make a difference.

I'd also add that schools really need some slack in schools to help cope with eg long term sickness, maternity, any gaps in staffing. Dealing with all of these causes massive issues with workload, I think.

But again, it costs money.

There is no way of improving the current state of education or teachers' working conditions without putting some more money in.

Feck of self-marking maths websites. I don't know ANY maths teachers who spend more than 2hrs a week on marking. They spend a great deal more time on planning!

I do agree scrapping Ofsted completely might help, especially for small primary schools. But I genuinely think that's even less likely to happen than a fully funded pay rise.

We had exactly the same experience! It was infuriating.
PE got a rave review, Maths didn't. The only difference, which the inspectors kept highlighting, was the fact that the skills progression for Maths was in the process of being typed up (by the full time class teacher, leader of 3 subjects -including Maths, a core subject. No extra pay, or time, of course) whereas the PE one was finished (by the Head, zero teaching commitment).

The expectation that teachers need to adapt/differentiate for all the needs in their classroom adds exponentially to workload and to teacher stress. There should be at least one specialist teacher working full time in every school working alongside the SENCo and teachers to provide appropriate support, more money spent on early identification and support for SEN, more TAs (appropriately trained and paid). In addition, whilst classroom teachers are striving to provide inclusive teaching, academies often manage out SEN students, LAs try to avoid awarding EHCPs and quite a few parents of children with more complex SEN would actually prefer that their children attended a specialist provision.

Exactly. And do you know where the skills curriculum is for maths? In the fucking national curriculum! Why are schools all having to duplicate this work? And if they wanted clear skill progression for art, or DT, or PE or whatever why didn't they write it into the NC2014 instead of leaving us all to guess what it should be?! All this subject leadership stuff is done outside my working day and I'm just a PT classroom teacher. It's completely unfair on primaries but even more so on tiny primaries.

Yes, thanks, I know those things. I was picking up on a previous post.

What you say is all perfectly valid. I think phrasing it as getting rid of inclusion is not a fortunate turn of phrase...

What gets me about the govt and Ofsted are that they are acting like there isn't a crisis in schools. Inspecting and expecting 'outstanding' progress and fancy curriculum when schools are being given buttons and skeleton staff to achieve this with.

Ofsted should inspect the Government and report on stuff like percentage of cover lessons, teacher vacancies, drop in support staff, schools without libraries, reduction in subjects offered etc and then grade them on quality of education on offer.

Won't Gillian mean just a return to the ‘21 jobs that a teacher must not do’ type agreement. ( or something naff like that, if anyone can remember? - no photcopying, no putting up displays...)

In practice a list of jobs that either ended up passed on to the even more poorly paid TA or as teachers we carried on doing them anyway, because ‘someone had to’

Meaningless.