Workload survey

[rollonthesummer]

Have just seen on Teacher Roar on Facebook that Nicky Morgan wants teachers to fill in the workload survey telling her what takes up all our time and how it could be reduced. It probably is just paying lip service and trying to get votes, but it's quite cathartic to do and may be worthwhile.

Please try to fill it in if you haven't already done so...

www.surveymonkey.com/s/Workloadchallenge

I have started to fill it in, but surely lots of this is down to individual schools? E.g. more subject leader non - contact time etc.

What kinds of things did you put out of interest?

I presume they are trying to get a feel for the types of problems and whether lots of people say the same.

I talked about excessive marking expectations, especially for ks1 who couldn't read it, PMR when implemented badly and involved collecting files and files of evidence, huge amounts of assessment inputting onto a computer that we aren't allowed to take home, ridiculous amounts of evidence in books even for practical tasks etc etc

I also talked about excessive marking expectations and unrealistic data being the be all and end all. I also mentioned excessive email usage and parental accessibility to email addresses- suggesting a cap on the email hours.

My school haven't given parents our email addresses yet-I look forward to that one!

I'm secondary but I focused on data and specifically data analysis for intervention. As in let a data analyst do the analysing and I will intervene . I also wrote about the 'spectre' of ofsted, changing goalposts, unrealistic targets and being measured against them. I also talked
about funding and comparing like with like, as in amazing inner city london schools and northern rural school's. Funding differs hugely therefore having a knock on effect on
class sizes, support and resources.
I said ppa should be protected and schools should encourage/support more peer/self marking.

I wonder...

how many responses they've had?
If she reads them?
Whether it will make any difference or if it's all election spiel.

Tristram Hunt, Nicky Morgan, Michael Gove-- I don't trust any of them!!

I do not trust that she has our best interests at heart and truly believe it is a political vote gathering spin. Nevertheless, I am not going to be one to complain that I am not being listened to and then say I didn't fill in the survey. It took me over an hour - wrote a lot. It was difficult to say what exactly was the barrier to a work/life balance. But marking expectations by HTs featured heavily. Also ,lesson grading which my HT is hell bent on doing (may I add, every 2-4 weeks for most staff) and book scrutinies every week. I a finding that HTs are the BIGGEST barrier and contributed to workload because they do the very things OFSTED apparently are saying are myths. However apparently OFSTED don't grade lessons yet every one of mine was! There are no national guidelines for observations, scrutinies and depth of marking so HTs are going to the extreme because all they see is a word attached to their school -RI, Good, Outstanding or Inadequate and if they don't know the expectations because they haven't been set out clearly, then yes' they are going to hammer staff with the worst possible workload going just to ensure they bathe in the glory of Good. Or Outstanding!!,

I agree management caduse a lot of the work because expectations are vague and they don't want to be accused of not doing enough or having low expectations.

I think the government/Ofsted or whoever makes the rules, need to be very specific, eg there should be no more than 1 observation per year etc so there is no grey area...

Cause