What would it take to fix the problem of teacher workload?

[TheMotherSide]

What would it take to fix teacher workload and thus stem the haemorrhaging of colleagues from schools?

Please share your out-of-the-box, blue sky thinking solutions to this perennial problem, that would put an end to the 55+ hour week (I know many do more) of endless evening and weekend working.

I appreciate that workload looks different in EYFS, primary, secondary and FE, and whether you are a one or 2-3-4 form entry school, and where on the index of deprivation your setting sits, so if your ideas pertain to a specific area of workload, please specify.

Let's assume full-time equivalent ‐so many colleagues are having to go part-time to reduce active workload in school, and are spending their days off catching up, essentially volunteering their time.

I'll start:

I would like to see the exploitative clause in teachers' contracts which compels teachers to work however many hours it takes to complete their tasks, without specifying a limit on said tasks, radically revised. It is this clause which allows government and callous management to pile on expectations of the workforce which cannot be reasonably met, leaving teachers open to coercion, bullying and surrendering any semblance of work life balance.

I would like to see a reform of Ofsted; encouraging the inspectorate to fulfil a much more supportive function instead of being a bogeyman many colleagues live in perpetual dread of and won't even mention by name. This would put a stop to so much fear-driven data collection and box-ticking.

I'd like to knock primary subject leadership on the head and revert to the subject coordinatorships of yesteryear, where a single colleague would not be held accountable for their peers' delivery and progress in their subject area. Colleagues were relied upon and trusted to teach subjects and fulfil the statutory objectives of the National Curriculum and tended to manage just fine.

I don't understand why people think teachers wouldn't bother to do a good job without Ofsted or another equivalent body. When people talk about the need to get rid of Ofsted the question is always asked 'what would we replace it with?'. Nothing. You don't need to inspect schools as a matter of course.

I have taught in both England and Australia and if I still lived in England I would have left teaching by now purely due to Ofsted and the ridiculous demands that came with a fear of inspection. Like marking books and creating displays and following the latest fad. I am happily teaching in Australia where we don't have an inspection body.

Do you know why teachers still plan and deliver good lessons in Australia? Mostly, because they care and take pride in their work. If they don't the SLT will work with them to improve. If the SLT are shit? Well this happens less often because they don't have to chase meaningless stupid targets and implement rules even they aren't quite sure why they are doing other than 'because Ofsted'. But if it does our equivalent of the local authority can come in and inspect to see if change is needed. Only if needed and only if the leadership is the problem. Individual teachers are managed by leadership.

I think a lot of us might remember some schools before Ofsted came along. Many needed to improve. No one evacuated whether a teacher was good or not. Poor staff were tolerated. Mostly by children who had no voice.

If teachers are professionals, there is a built in requirement of flexibility and going a bit further than the bare minimum. I’m appalled at some leadership in schools though. Not an ounce of HR common sense in any of them. No idea of job design, of working out what doesn’t really need to be done, (£45,000 salary and putting up displays?) Even thinking a TA should do it is woeful management. A 16 year old A level student would be better!

Schools are top down and poor at engaging some parents. The Heads need to get out into the community a bit more. Talk to people. Most do actually went DC to be educated. Teaching can feel like it’s done to a child rather than as a collaborative process. You don’t need smaller classes to have a well run school. You need the right ethos and slt.

The big spend needs to be on Send. Mainstream hubs and more special schools.

@TizerorFizz as a SENDCO in a secondary PRU I couldn't agree more. I'd say 90% of the kids (if not more) that we end up with in the unit where I teach wouldn't be there if their SEND needs had been properly dealt with back in mainstream primary. But as it is their needs go un-dealt with and they act up, get more frustrated, angrier and sadder and it all comes to a head when they're 12, 13 years old. More focus on SEND provision and specialist care in primaries would make all the difference to our kids.

Proper support for SEN - there are more severe needs than ever in schools and far fewer adults to support. Build more special schools and units.

Much more value placed on support staff. It is virtually impossible to meet the needs of all children in an infant class without other adults.

Complete rewrite of the curriculum. It is dull and uninspiring across all key stages. The primary curriculum is unnecessarily difficult and doesn't allow for mastering the basics. Primary maths now covers stuff that I didn't learn until well into my teens, but too many children don't get the chance to understand it properly. Primary English is boring and dry and completely disconnected from the secondary curriculum. So much time is spent on English and maths to the detriment of other subjects, particularly the creative ones.

Get rid or completely revamp Ofsted. The ever-changing goalposts and subjectivity lead to unnecessary pressure for unreliable outcomes.

Better funding, and ideally unwind the MAT system. The support we get from the MAT is nothing compared to what we used to get from the local authority, yet you know there's some bigwig at the top creaming off a fat salary.

Apologies for typo earlier!

@OhYoko

I used to be an Education Officer in a former life. We had brilliant peripatetic SEN advisory teachers. We did find schools didn’t always follow advice and for some, the default position was to exclude. However this, at primary, was rare. We were able to use our primary special schools for the most deserving cases.

We were working in the wake of the Warnock Report. This gave an unintended green light to close special schools in many LAs as Sen DC were now in the mainstream schools. There was nothing wrong with that ideal but we always needed greater resources and training to make it work. And that was with far fewer send kids than now! My LA didn’t close Sen schools but we always had pressure on places. Many more schools need Sen units and parents need a lot more help and advice much earlier. Social workers and EPs used to do that work snd early admission to nursery was given to those DC who needed it. We tried to identify DC early.

I do think if more resources could go into sen and early intervention, we would improve education for everyone.

I think we need to look at other countries and see what they are doing and what works. I don’t mean look at countries and cherry picking the bits they fancy and putting together a patchwork of all the worst bits with none of the supportive infrastructure those countries have.

What ‘Inspectorate’ system do other countries have. How do teachers feel about it? Is its implementation one of the most named reason for teachers quitting those countries?

What does the curriculum/planning/workload/school day/holidays look like-how does that work?

With a Conservative government I would fully expect Gove/Keegan/Williamson to go travelling across the globe and decide that we need
-shorter summer holidays like in x country
-classes of 55 like in x country
-no TAs like in x country
-longer school days, like in x country

but I have my fingers crossed that an incoming government might look at the bigger picture.

For me, if you cut 20% out of the curriculum so we had wriggle room for enjoyment as well as consolidation and scrapped/massively reformed Ofsted and removed any sort of link with results and forced academisation and job losses, I would be much happier. I think with Ofsted gone, a lot of the workload of box ticking and ‘just in case’ would vanish. It would also stop the massive industry of people who have not taught in the classroom for very long, setting themselves up as ‘educational advisors’ and charging schools a total fortune for mock Ofsteds which cause huge levels of stress for teachers. I think this is bloody abhorrent!

Great post.

Ideas which don't cost more money basically are around changing accountability measures / ofsted and thining the curriculum a bit a primary (don't know about secondary)

Ideas that cost money are around increasing sen support, so more OT and SaLT provision, more special school places, units and trained SEN TA career path and improved PRU functions. Then having maximum class sizes of 25.

Then even more money are wider social issues like housing and poverty.