Unfair workload?

[clevername]

Hi all

I am an English teacher in a secondary school in an area that is selective (nearby grammar schools). Our school results weren't as good as we'd hoped last year and, as a result, things have been a bit tougher than before. Our system of measuring progress (assessments and reporting etc) changed this year and workload has been crazy because of this. The need for 'robust' progress data outweighs the need for robust teachers, it seems.

Anyway, English is obviously traditionally a subject with a heavy marking load but all of the above has meant that my department are absolutely drowning in marking and planning. It's always been difficult, and we've always taken lots home to do at the evenings and weekends but this year it has become totally unsustainable. We are all struggling and miserable because of it.

I appreciate that my experience is limited to my subject and that different subjects have different challenges but it is becoming clear that, in our particular situation, there are teachers in the school who are able to get their planning/marking work done in school hours and leave at a reasonable (early) time without taking any work home with them. We all get paid on the same pay scale and (more importantly, as far as I'm concerned) we all have the same P&P entitlement. In essence, we, in the English department, are expected to do a SHED LOAD more work and the sheer volume of this means we are doing an ENORMOUS amount in our 'home' time.

Now, I promise you that I'm not being deliberately inflammatory in asking this (I'm really not trying to start a staff room bunfight!) but I'd really like your perspectives/opinions as to whether this is fair? When I have spoken about this with people at school I get a lot of knowing nods and 'who'd be an English teacher' comments... but surely our higher workload should be acknowledged in more time to get stuff done?!

Sorry if I sound bitter (I probably am, to be fair!)...

God don't go thinking that maths is a piece of piss. Maths has the same problem as English in that it's double weighted, a headline figure and every student has to take it to GCSE. Major scrutiny and a juggling act of interventions, reports, revision classes. We also seem to be constantly marking mocks - 3, 1.5 hour papers at a time, which is more often now we start GCSE in Y9.
A-level - very popular so class sizes are huge - imagine having a class of 23 then looking up other subjects on SIMS and seeing classes of 6? That really increases the marking workload at A-level too. Also, because maths is 'important', loads of kids take it and then struggle, so again the round of interventions, reporting and endless mocks.

Don't forget having to support/make up for weaker colleagues because maths specialists are hard to come by.

Plenty of maths teachers quitting over workload too!

In my place English get an extra free a week. I don't think they mark much at KS3 either.

Obviously schools are different, and different subjects have different pressures but I think the problem goes beyond just the volume of marking in English (still undoubtedly an issue - all students do it, all in our school do two GCSEs (Lit and Lang) and we certainly do just as many assessments (and just as much marking) at KS3 as we do at KS4). It may just be that I'm rubbish at it, but it's just so hard to mark (and it, therefore, takes a really long time)! Reading a response and then deciding on what mark to give it against a vague and often generic mark scheme is truly very difficult. We regularly hold moderation and standardisation sessions and we struggle to agree on marks as a whole department...

So, when you have 25 GCSE Lit paper 2 mocks (which each contain 3 essay responses within them) as well as 30 year 8 Literature assessments (essay response to an extract-based question), 30 year 8 language assessments (a GCSE-style language paper) and 24 year 9 lit assessments to facilitate and mark in ONE week (as I will have the week following half term as its assessment week), and each of these assessments is, frankly, a bitch to mark (and you know that you are going to be working CONSTANTLY in order to get it done), it's hard not to get down about it. I'm lucky I don't teach year 7, because if I did (as some in my department do), I would have another 2 class sets of assessments to mark in that timescale.

In our most recent standardisation meeting we all marked one GCSE language paper, in silence, in order to standardise our marks. It took us 30 mins. To do one. And that doesn't include comment writing. And we probably weren't being as thorough as we would have to be with our own marking.

Anyway, enough whinging from me... Clearly workload is a massive issue for everyone.

Thanks for all of your responses - it's certainly helped me to get a more rounded picture.

Having all those assessments to mark in one week sounds awful but is easily solved by not holding all KS3 assessments in the same week.

My department spreads assessments out deliberately so you're not overloaded with marking. Same number of assessments but more spread out. It sounds like something that should be suggested to your SLT.

Hate the maths bashing. I have 2 small children so reduced to 3 days a week, 8-4.30 so I can have an evening with them.

We mark assessments every week- shared out among dept, track the results. Mark our own books. Plan our own lessons- no shared planning. Then there's the almost weekly whole school tracking and reports to write, detentions, chasing homework, extra y11 sessions etc etc.
I put in a whole day's work on Saturday to keep on top of things.

So maths don't have the lightest workload. We have a hell of a lot of pressure.

I know... it's ridiculous but this is the new system that I spoke about in my OP. There was more flexibility last year so we could spread out our marking load but this year it's virtually impossible.

We've been told we can roll some assessments back but then we're left with the problem of not having enough time to teach the unit on which we will be testing. They can't be rolled forward because of the reporting schedule.

It probably wouldn't be quite as bad if it was just an incredibly intense week every so often and then it all calmed down the rest of the time. But it's not. We still have to complete mini assessments to monitor progress and mark the HW that has to be set once a week, not to mention class note books (which always fall to the bottom of the priority list). And then it's the other assessment week for year 11 and KS5 a couple of weeks after the first one (which will mean, for me, a FULL language mock (2 full language exam papers, a reading and writing section in each, 2 full literature papers, which in total will include 5 essay responses about 4 different texts) and a mock for my year 13 class, all in one week).

We've sent emails and spoken to the powers that be but it seems as if nothing can be done this year - the ship has sailed for the new system and there's no way of making changes mid-way through the year.

I know that other teachers in other departments don't have close to this workload (at our school), even taking into account their subjects' varying challenges - they've told me. This is what frustrates me and feels unfair. It's like PPA entitlement, pay, the way the cover system is rostered is vehemently 'fair' but attitude to unbalanced workloads isn't.

But I said I was going to stop whingeing. So I really am going to now!

I used to teach music and - although I sympathise with the enormous marking workload of English teachers - I'd have felt pretty irritated if they'd have been paid extra or given fewer lessons to teach because of it. I worked just as long hours.

Less marking than English - but still teaching 200 children and marking each of their books every fortnight, and then more extended essay, composition and performance marking for GCSE and A level. And with so many different classes, that also makes report writing something of a mammoth task.

Less time staying up to date than for science - but still having to keep up to date with current music, and arrange music for the different instrumentalists and choral strengths available in any given academic year, which amounts to so many hours of work.

And a similar amount of extra-curricular contact time as PE: 2 hours a day as standard, plus an extra 4-10 hours for each concert (usually three or four every half term), plus a lot of hours for a Musical every other year (much more time consuming than a straight play), and a Music tour every other year.

I loved my job, and although I hated the hours, I tried never to whinge to others about it. But I'd probably have felt like whingeing if other subjects had had allowances not given to me, given my workload was one of the highest in the school.

I realise my whingeing is annoying (I'm boring myself with it!). And that's why I'm not going to do it anymore (on this thread anyway... )

Your workload sounds monstrous, Beatrix, as do many others who have shared their stories here. My story only relates to my experience and my school, and I fully appreciate that different schools vary enormously (the music provision at our school is nothing like what you describe, for example).

I teach English to Alevel in a grammar and we don't do nearly that much marking and we still got rated outstanding for our standards in our inspection last year. Do you really have to mark everything so thoroughly?or set so many assessments? I only take up homework books once every4- 6 weeks and mark it all in one go, mainly ticks and comments. You need to revise the dept marking policy; it sounds completely unreasonable and you will all burn out fast.

It's best not to compare your workloads with other teachers.

First of all, you are not them. You don't have their degree, so can't do their job. If you wanted a cushy teaching job with little marking, you wouldn't have become an English teacher.

I am a Science teacher in a prep school, i.e. no technician, and no published teaching resources. I just skim and scan when I mark, but prepping for my lessons and clearing up is a huge time suck. Would you like my job?

PE/Games teachers have away matches, on weekends. In winter. No further comment needed.

Music and Drama teachers have to produce several productions a year, as well as coordinate peri-teachers and external exams. They are the focus of Open Days. Art teachers are expected to decorate the whole school, mostly in their own time.

Humanities teachers often teach every student in the school for one lesson a week. They don't even get to know their students properly.

Mathematics teachers are very often involved in the running of the school, from timetabling, to options, to data analysis - a job that takes far more time than the hour or two they get for it.

Don't whinge. You won't be seen as a team player.

And MFL teachers have huge marking, with the added attention to detail of precise spelling and grammar. They also have to take students abroad for a week at a time.

Trips abroad are the highlight of the job for me, kids have always been a pleasure!

I also love residential school trips - physically exhausting but so worthwhile and so lovely to spend time with the kids in a different environment. Basically I love all the bits of my job that although tiring and time consuming involve time with the kids. I dislike all the bits which involve data and paperwork for paperwork's sake.

Unfortunately complaining that one subject work load is worse than a different subject is exactly what the government want. If we are arguing amongst ourselves over "who has got it worse" we won't be battling against the whole system.