Damian Hinds promises to cut teacher workload and hours to improve teacher recruitment and retention

[noblegiraffe]

He is going to make a speech today pledging to 'strip away” pointless tasks to allow teachers to “focus on what actually matters'

You might be reminded of the 21 admin tasks that it was agreed that we shouldn't do under the workload agreement (that were removed from the pay and conditions document and replaced with a vague statement saying we shouldn't do clerical work).

But this time the focus seems to be on measures that school put in place for accountability purposes, and excessive marking "Because that’s what endless data cuts, triple-marking, 10-page lesson plans, and, worst of all, mocksteds are: a distraction from the core purpose of education. And a costly distraction at that"

The government will pledge not to make any changes to the curriculum other than those already announced (times tables tests) in the rest of this parliament (so 2022) - but we've heard that before and then they have made necessary changes.

And he has promised to work with the teaching unions and professional bodies specifically on recruitment and retention.

I guess the shit is finally hitting the fan at the DfE and they can't stick their heads in the sand any more?

www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-news/damian-hinds-pledges-action-strip-away-teacher-workload

Cutting class sizes will be thing that keeps me in the profession I think. At least 31 in all of my KS3 groups. I can't keep up.

Then behaviour. SLTs to actually take some responsibility for it and not just blindly believe it's down to poor teaching/'engagement'.

The teacher recruitment/retention crisis has also caused an unacknowledged increase in workload for experienced teachers who have to pick up the pieces of high staff turnover, supply teachers, non-specialist teachers and the hiring of staff who were not the best candidate, but the only candidate.

How do you "correct for intake" in an OFSTED judgement? In what sense? The performance measures already prioritise progress over attainment, so prior attainment is covered. Does intake affect quality of teaching? If so, how would you correct for it?
I'm not saying that I think schools with very different cohorts don't fact different challenges. I know they do.

Re behaviour, it comes to funding then. As I said, funding and high stakes accountability. All else is tinkering.

The recruitment problem was what prompted me back into classroom teaching from SLT. Because I was teaching an almost full timetable on top of my other responsibilities in order to mitigate the problems with recruiting and it was unsustainable. Maybe if I had taught PE I might still be SLT!

I do agree with others that behaviour is a big issue as well. I think for recruitment, behaviour is a bigger issue than workload in many ways. When I told people I wanted to become a secondary teacher, most of their negative responses were about behaviour, not workload. However, I think this is a perception of behaviour that has been fed by the press and isn't actually reality- so I'm not sure what the DofE or anyone could do about this!

perception of behaviour that has been fed by the press

Oh I dunno, read some threads on the Staffroom about behaviour and you might change your mind.

I think BoneyBackJefferson has listed some interesting points about behaviour - and, importantly, linked it to the issue of funding - and special needs funding in particular.

Sadly, I think the direction of travel is away from funding, and funding for special needs. It's going to make the coming years very challenging, even if they manage to magic away some of the workload-related issues.

Interesting thread, by the way. Thanks for starting it, Noble

And I see that FallenMadonna has summed up my thoughts in a neat nutshell, or a nutshell of neatness. I missed that.

FallenMadonna,

Essentially, it should be possible (given that currently, ordering schools by %PP clearly shows that schools with the highest %PP get the lowest ofsted grades and vice versa) to produce a range of descriptors that describe a 'passing' school with different types of intake.

So for example, a school with a very high % of Traveller children would be expected to have a lower level of attendance; a school that selects its intake would be expected to achieve higher results; a school serving an area of high deprivation might be rewarded for its level of pastoral care and family outreach rather than penalised for its lower results.

Inspecting ALL passing schools at the same frequency (and using the same descriptors, whuich would be valid for a whole cycle before being replaced r revised) would also be critical in rebalancing Ofsted results. Current 'Oustanding' schools may not have been inspected for 10 years, when descriptors were very different, and progress not a particularly important element. Newly 'Good' schools have actually been judged against MORE stringent criteria than old 'Outsnating' ones are, but the outstanding schools are not re-inspected - which is clearly iniquitous.

I listened to this and turned to my partner and said "that's all well and good but until the government perform a culture change away from 'entitlement' they're still going to have a crisis".

Workload isn't as bad (touch wood) as it was a year ago. The tide is slowly turning.

The entitlement of students(and parents) however is another story.

I would also say that the 'social work' aspect of teaching (particularly in primary) is time consuming and emotionally exhausting.

In secondaries, there are often pastoral care / support staff, but in primary, that role is part of a class teacher's workload. So meetings with a team around a family in need? Attended by class teacher, with input prepared by them. Monitoring of patterns of non-attendance / lack of personal care compared with days you know they go to a specific parent overnight? Part of the teacher's job. Arranging breakfast for those who haven't had any? Either teacher or TA, depending on the school. Behaviour incidents that could be linked to home circumstances? Meeting involving the class teacher. Bullying, in school or out, online or not? Class teacher. Safeguarding monitoring? Class teacher. Keeping records to pass to designated person once a safeguarding concern has been raised? Class teacher. Awareness that a child has become a young carer? Class teacher. Support following bereavement? Class teacher.

All of the above are a routine part of my work, and I'm in a naice school in a naice area. It's obviously much more time consuming and onerous in schools in much more deprived areas, and was a reason I moved to my current school - I couldn't balance the emotional requirements of dealing with the daily issues confronting many of my class due to their home circumstances with my own role as a parent of (then) young children.

noblegiraffe I'm not totally naive about behaviour, I have worked with teens in a non-school setting for nearly two years, and obviously it's different but you do still get issues especially between young people as the result of falling out or young people who are struggling with their lives in general and take it out on you. It's not like I've never been sworn at by a teenager before!

However, I have genuinely met people who seem to think every state secondary school in the country has a problem with knife crime- and I know that isn't true.

I'm sorry if I sounded dismissive of behaviour as an issue, and I'm sure if it improved, it would help with teacher retention. However, I think this would take a long time to filter down to affecting recruitment.

I agree with leccy re. SLT roles needing to be re-focused; if they took a fair share of the class teaching, ridiculous class sizes would be reduced at all Key Stages, and we would of course benefit from their 'exemplary practice' (not !).

Fallen is it too late for you to skill up to the high standards of the PE teachers who seem to ascend to SLT without the need for basic literacy ?!

Sadly I also think summative data is only usefully collected once a year, which is a position incompatible with senior leadership

I don't think that summative data is even usefully collected once a year. Without any national benchmarking and every school doing their own thing, it's meaningless.

Ofsted 'not ruling out' judging schools on teacher workload.

schoolsweek.co.uk/ofsted-chief-not-ruling-out-judging-schools-on-teacher-workload/

Doesn't sound like they're too keen on the idea though.

Here are the important bits of Damian's speech:

"That is why our plans to strengthen Qualified Teacher Status are so important. Our consultation has just – with over 2,000 responses, and I’m very grateful to all those of you who took the time to respond.

We will be taking these plans forward, working hand in hand with the profession, and we will set out the next stage of this process by the summer.

I also think it is particularly important that we do more to make sure teachers have ready access to high quality teaching materials that they can choose to draw on, with the confidence that they are used and approved by their peers.

At the heart of great professions is the concept of building on the best practice and body of knowledge that has gone before. And I want to make it easier for teachers to do that throughout their careers.

That is why, as a starting point, I intend to use our new Curriculum Fund to make it easier for schools and teachers to share and access high quality teaching resources.

And I will work with the profession to help teachers to access a broad set of quality curriculum and teaching materials – that teachers and leaders can adapt for their schools and classes, without having to write them from scratch.

Finally, we will continue to work on making flexible working more possible, and easier for schools and teachers. The modern world demands this, and if teaching is to remain attractive to the next generation, it is a challenge we will all have to meet."

schoolsweek.co.uk/damian-hinds-ascl-2018-conference-speech-the-full-text/

Hmmm.

So we will all have to buy Pearson text books so we don't have to prepare resources. Sounds great! Not.

Note absolutely nothing about increasing school funding in order to help them pay for new textbooks.

Something online? TES won't be happy about that.

What element of workload do you want to 'give' then stayingalive? I don't think there's anything wrong with the idea of a good bank of pre-prepared resources that Ofsted will be happy to see in use that teachers can draw on.

It doesn't mean you have to use them, it just means that on a Thursday afternoon after a manic week, you can just pull something pre-prepped out and know that it will be deemed acceptable. That needs to be ok.

Ofsted should absolutely not be in the business of deciding whether a particular resource used in a classroom is acceptable.

Tbh, neither should the government.

Did you see the farce about them only approving one textbook for mastery of mathematics in primary schools?

In Science and Maths it is perfectly possible to entirely resource lessons in KS3 and 4 without making a single thing yourself. Ditto Sciences and Psychology at A level too. If I make resources, it's because I want to tailor them to my teaching and my students. The problem is buying textbooks and photocopying on pitifully low budget allocations.

Meh. He's seen the trads on Twitter talking about textbooks and run with it without really knowing the situation.