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)

Would be a good start!

Scrap OFSTED

Ban any form of revision / intervention / period 6 - if it doesn’t fit in the school day, it’s not happening

Workload impact every form / email / spreadsheet that is sent to staff. If it is absolutely necessary, take out something else that isn’t.

Tell parents not to expect to see ‘marked’ books. Whole class feedback is much more effective.

Teaching solely from pre-prepared resources with no adaptation to my classes (would be absolutely crap).

Step forward Oak Academy.

I'll bite.

Some teachers are their own worst enemies - all this stuff in an unpaid lunch hour. Don't do it.

Will you be thought of badly? Probably.
Are you well thought -of for doing it now? No.
Revision classes? Unless they are in freed up time pre-exams, then no.

I am not proposing things I have not done myself both in the UK and Au.

Yep. Mine's a Monday too. So none on weeks where there are training days or bank holidays etc.

"If you can't accept that you'll be spat at or hit by a child, then you can't work in schools these days."

I agree that it is totally and utterly mad (and unacceptable) what primary teachers are expected to put up with. I've never been spat at or hit by a child in my teaching career.

Was it always like this at primary?

I presume that rather than being the government-funded free accessible for all lessons that OA provided during lockdown, it’s going to be a subscription service that schools have to pay for? Is the plan going to be that although schools would have to spend money buying the scheme, the lessons could ultimately be ‘delivered’ by anyone, thus solving the recruitment/retention crisis?

My school can barely afford pencils-let alone the new pay rises or the massive electricity bills-so we certainly couldn’t afford any subscriptions.

Who owns Oak, do we know???

Today I would have liked to have not had to spend my time writing letters for high school applications and appeals to schools that the pupils will also sit entrance exams for BEFORE the exams are sat. If they fail, that time has been a waste.

I started teaching before there was ppa. But there was also so, so SO many things that we weren't expected to do and hardly any of the paperwork we have to do now.

Scrap Ofsted inspections in their currently format. Ours is imminent and the preparation is ridiculous. So many deep dives, LA ‘friendly’ inspections, school improvement officer visits etc and staff leaving, I think because of all of this.

I've been teaching 20 years. In the past, you would occasionally get a pupil who would get aggressive and violent. They would either be permanently excluded or a place at a behavioural support unit found quite swiftly. Even now if we have aggressive pupils in Year 5 or 6 we've found a way to fairly quickly move them somewhere else. I am head of KS1 and get hit or kicked most weeks.

It is mostly since COVID when we are getting children with additional needs who are wholly unsuited to mainstream schools starting in Reception. For whatever reason, maybe COVID backlog, these children are not being identified as unsuitable for mainstream at a pre-school level and suitable processes not put in place. Then it takes months of gathering evidence for an EHCP and applying for it. If they are young, there is very little alternative provision. We have tried reduced timetables for some but now the DfE is saying those can't be used (without solving the problem of what to do with children who are violent and aggressive in school). It is also a other job persuading some parents that mainstream school is not for their child as they see special education/alternative provision as some kind of shame.

The other kids who are physically aggressive are those with extremely challenging home backgrounds. Again it takes months or more to get any social care involvement and a long time after that to (hopefully) see any improvement in behaviour.

So overall I see it as a system of failures - lack of early intervention, lack of provision, lack of social care involvement. I don't see the situation improving any time soon.

I forgot to add as well, lack of support for emotional/mental health issues. We have KS2 pupils with many SEMH difficulties who can become aggressive during the day when they are upset. Most don't even get referred to Cahms because they don't meet the threshold.

Agree with PPs, there needs to be expansion of special schools and units. It just seems so utopian to try to keep everyone in the same classroom. Schools need to stop being penalized for excluding students. Some students are so badly behaved that they are learning zero by being in school anyway - why should they continue to be kept there where they will just create loads of extra work for teachers and disrupt everyone else's work?

In Japan, parents are actually given marking books and told to mark the kids homework themselves, for some subjects at least. I know that in the UK a lot of parents wouldn't bother (sigh), but if even SOME parents did this, it would surely reduce workloads a lot?

I've heard of some schools like Michaela shifting to whole-class feedback, which I think has greatly reduced the amount of time spent on marking.

I think hardcore no-smartphone policies (and whatever is needed to enforce them) would reduce time spent on discipline, based on what I have heard.

More of a long term thing, but would it not greatly reduce workload in English schools if there was a move towards a set-in-stone content-specific curriculum supported by standardized textbooks or knowledge organizers or whatever? I live in a country where everything is textbook based, and really like it. I feel that teachers in England must have to waste mindboggling amounts of time creating all these lessons from scratch. It's possible to adapt and do a bit of differentiation while using a textbook - it's not like the teacher has to stand there reading it out line by line and calling it a lesson.

Oh, and.... what is all this stuff about emailing parents and dealing with their emails? Madness.

Parents should be told to email the school office, which can triage inquiries and pass on only those which are truly important. I bet 3/4 of these questions/demands/complaints are a load of crap.

We used to do that. It sometimes took 4 days for email to get to me when I was actually quite senior. School offices are way too busy to triage emails - in particular in a large secondary school. You can't triage emails when there are 1600 pupils.

Funnily enough, if we had centralised curriculum , textbooks you had to teach from, lessons you had to deliver in a particular order, and texts you had to teach, I would definitely leave teaching. The creativity and choice in my subject and the autonomy I enjoy in the classroom (in my own school I have managed over years to carve this bit out) are what keeps me in the job. I like planning, I actually find marking interesting . Adapting a textbook takes time, whole class feedback actually takes tome and quite a lot of skill. I went into teaching because I like learning and sharing knowledge - why on Earth would I want to make my subject dull, constrictive and rote taught/learnt? I m frequently sad that because of obsession with assessments (internal) and then exams , I have seen myself turning into an exam fodder, stuff it all in teacher. Resistance is futile.

Yes, planning is time consuming, as is marking - but it's the admin , admin, admin, admin, pointless demands to do more admin, the lack of leadership time, the soul destroying meetings, the increasingly dull school led CPD, incessant assessments followed by not fun marking , data and then admin,admin , admin and chasing up behaviour incidents that can all go. Then I can do more planning and marking! Did I mention the admin?

I would, however, like the specs, especially at A Level to be more streamlined. A consequent of A Level reforms was that subjects had to prove academic worth - which added far too much content to already content heavy specs. I teach 3 A level subjects. If the aim is to teach properly (and with a broad ability spectrum used to spoon feeding and added recaps of learning) one of the three has 2 1/2 years of content easily!!

i find the attitude to teachers perplexing.

Apparently, investment banks, management consultants, City law firms et al have to pay ludicrous salaries to attract the ‘talent’, yet there are at least 10 applicants for every vacancy.

OTOH, if you advertise for a Maths or Physics teacher, you often don’t get any candidates, let alone strong well qualified candidates. But, apparently, paying up is unaffordable.

Then, if you are actually good at what you do, you get treated like a Year 14, whilst being called ‘senior staff’, disrespected by pupils and SLT, and the pay, compared to alternative careers, is a fraction.

Teaching is really exciting and rewarding but not enough of a vocation to tolerate the above.

so, from next year, it will be semi-retirement/tutoring/back to finance for me.

More of a long term thing, but would it not greatly reduce workload in English schools if there was a move towards a set-in-stone content-specific curriculum supported by standardized textbooks

You could only do this if they don’t change the curriculum constantly as the books quickly become obsolete and schools can’t afford to replace them-they just become a way of publishers making money .

The government used to produce QCA topic overviews for each subject which I actually quite liked. They also used to produce a phonics scheme (Letters and Sounds) which I quite liked. You know what the best but about them was…? They were free.

Now the government have decided Letters and Sounds is not fit for purpose and schools must choose from a state sanctioned list of phonics providers to use-none are free. Some of them cost tens of thousands. The evidence base for them is suspect.

Someone is making a lot of money out of schools. If you say, ‘we’re doing our own thing’ then you run the risk that Ofsted (who seem to be themselves totally unregulated) will fail you.

Oh, and just to add to my above post, in proposing a solution.

Pay more, especially in STEM.

Treat teachers like professionals and let them manage their own classes. Thus, no more whole-school marking policies, ‘book looks’, lesson observations etc etc.

you know if a teacher is not doing well due to results and pupil/parent feedback. Only where there is a concern should there be more management.

You could only do this if they don’t change the curriculum constantly as the books quickly become obsolete and schools can’t afford to replace them

Oh yes, I forgot that bit! Excellent point!

STOP CHANGING THE SODDING CURRICULUM GILLIAN!!

Re: Stop changing the curriculum, I totally agree. However, a previous thread had primary teachers saying that they desperately wanted the curriculum to change, to take out content as it was too much to get through.

I think how primaries are assessed is interesting - GCSEs are marked on a curve, so the right percentage gets a pass regardless of standard of work. In primary, supposedly it is standard of work that gets the 'meets expected' regardless of how many pupils pass. If they can't do that at GCSE, how on earth are they doing it at primary?

I think if curriculum change is driven by the profession that's fine. But change for a political whim, or because three years have passed and it's the rules...not OK.

However, a previous thread had primary teachers saying that they desperately wanted the curriculum to change, to take out content as it was too much to get through.

Yes, I want the curriculum to change to one that’s more streamlined, enjoyable and has room to consolidate… then, not changed any more! 😂

I think if Ofsted was reduced to a health & safety and safeguarding check and educational 'quality assurance' moved to a school to school support model, that would make a massive, instant difference to workload and stress levels.

I don't know who the Ofsted think they are at the moment. The additional workload the latest EIF has created in primary is abhorrent.

I work in a primary school that tries hard to minimise excess workload, and we have group planning which lightens the load considerably. My last school was 1 form entry and we planned everything from scratch, no schemes, so this is a refreshing change.
However I still can't get away with much less than 50 hours a week.
Changes I'd want to see are

• immediate halt to subject deep dives in primary (I'm a subject lead but have been given no time or money to cover the responsibility- the thought of an inspection haunts my nightmares)
• no requirement to write text for subjects in reports. We currently have to write a para each on writing, reading, maths, science, curriculum. Waste of time, as you write statements like "Bob is developing his fluency in the 4 operations for whole numbers". Parents might think 'wow that's great' but if Bob is in Y6 there is nothing to indicate he's working at Y4 level. Tick boxes would be quicker and more transparent for parents.
• no expectation for teachers to run after school extra curricular clubs. I really resent paying childcare for my own children to enable me to provide childcare to pupils for free. I think that this expectation is coming from Ofsted.
• Termly summarise assessment is fine, I find it really interesting to see what they can do independently. But entering their results on a database question by question - takes hours. If that's really required we need time out of class for it.
• immediate dissolution of Ofsted. Horrible set up, a stick to threaten us with, not fit for purpose.

I'm not optimistic that positive change is likely, even under Labour, so I'm working my way round to accepting that the last 10 years that I've spent in education are a sunk cost, and that the sooner I move on the less I waste. By hanging in I'll just increase the level of sink cost.