I'm SMT - tell me what would make your job easier or your workload reduce?

[Sandringhat]

So I would like to ask teachers what things could we do to make your job easier? I don't mean things your line manager should do, like support you with your tricky year 8s or order another printer.

I mean things that are out of your head of departments hands. Things that could make a difference to the overall school as a workplace, what schools have you worked at that did certain things brilliantly?

Don’t schedule compulsory pointless briefings every morning that could be replaced by an email. Don’t have more than one meeting a week after school.

Do be visible in the corridors and around the site at break and lunch actively challenging poor behaviour.

Do respond to call-outs promptly, remove the miscreant from the class and don’t bring them back. Then sanction the miscreant yourself for having to be removed from the class.

Do look at the Ofsted myth busting advice and pay attention to the bits that say lesson plans aren’t required, triple marking isn’t required and so on.

Don’t have extremely onerous performance management requirements. Do give pay rises to staff.

Do away with a rigid marking policy - it is the one, most pointless and time-consuming thing Ofsted don't require, which makes everyone's lives hell. Assess via short tests regularly instead.

Invest in some classroom technology, which actually improves people's lives - one which links up with other systems (registers, SEND information etc.) you use and which is a one-stop system for all communication. There are brilliant Apps out there, but they are expensive.

Make it compulsory that homework is done via technology, which is self-marking and automatically gives feedback to learners. Same as above - expensive, but brilliant if used correctly.

Have decent IT support and hire more people if necessary.

Support the creation of smaller classes in middle and bottom sets rather than the creation of huge sink sets and ensure the best teachers are stuck in front of these. In top sets, the teacher makes little difference, assuming they know how to cater for the top-end students.

Ensure no barrage of emails - instead, get someone in the office to send out a daily 'morning briefing' email, with vital information for all staff, to do away with pointless meetings.

Support the notion that no after-school meetings take place during weeks, in which staff have parents' evenings on.

Be visible. Learning walk all you want by all means, be supportive, but for goodness sake don't just stand there and observe if a student misbehaves.

Offer up communication with more difficult parents.

The above is a summary of what happens in all the best schools I have worked in, with happier staff as a result.

These are great, thank you, I am going to print them and use these.

Any more?

A lot of these are actually possible as well, the only ones I know will make my head clench up is the 'spend money on technology' as there is never any money and usually more debt in schools now, that SMT have to try and cover and provide cost saving initiatives instead of spending.

the only ones I know will make my head clench up is the 'spend money on technology' as there is never any money and usually more debt in schools now, that SMT have to try and cover and provide cost saving initiatives instead of spending

That depends on how you measure cost. We use an app, which combines annotated seating planning, information sharing, a behaviour system, which instantly feeds back to parents and an analytical tool for attendance, behaviour, homework etc. all in one. Now total up the man hours saved (in one school a single seating plan with all annotations would take me up to an hour to produce), time that by the number of people in your school on their relevant pay scales and you may well be spending far less money than you think you are.

Say, in that school without that seating plan, but which requires all teachers to make and annotate their own. A teacher with an average 8 classes on M6 earning £22/hour. 8x22=£176 per teacher. 50 teachers in your school = £8800 wasted on seating plan making alone. Only once each, not even taking into account any changes. Madness.

Time saved can then be re-invested in making teaching more interesting. Guess in which school lessons were more interesting, behaviour better and as a result more bums on seats meant more money?

Get a workeable marking policy in place.
Support teachers with behaviour.
Limit meetings, observations and learning walks to the bare minimum.

Any names of Apps/software you rate would be very helpful.

@Foenie could you approach senior management with a view of asking the pta to fund technology?

The more teachers that suggest it, the more likely it will be brought up at the pta meeting.

Any names of Apps/software you rate would be very helpful.

Class Charts for automated everything.
GCSEPod or Kerboodle for revision/ automated homework marking. Also saves you tonnes on books and planners as everything is online.

could you approach senior management with a view of asking the pta to fund technology?

I am senior management.
I left my last place, because it was woefully inefficient and resistant to any proposal to change their attitude toward the staff they were haemmorrhaging.

Value your experienced staff - offer them relevant cpd and ask their advice. Don’t just make a fuss of the latest workaholic nqt.

Enough with the stupid marking policies. Just because you once went on a course that told you ‘Ofsted will want to see ....’ doesn’t make it true or workable.
Stop paying consultants offensive amounts of money to put teachers under huge amounts of stress and tell you what you should already know.
Back your staff, trust your staff and don’t play groups of staff against one another.

more PPA - the minimum legal requirement of 2.5 hours per week is simply not enough, especially if you are asking a lot of you staff.

My current school is the first school I've worked in that only offers the bare minimum. I've worked in about 6 (secondary) schools, and all other at least had 3 hours per week. The best (an outstanding school) gave us 5 x 50 mins (lessons were 50 minutes long) per week.

Very true Carrieblue

Ok, on the marking policies....what things do you think are pointless? If you could create an excellent marking policy what would it say?

As Ofsted do say (and I have met a few in my time) that they don't mind what the policy is, as long as it is followed and consistent throughout the school.

Ok, on the marking policies....what things do you think are pointless? If you could create an excellent marking policy what would it say?

Marking in general. Research clearly says it has little to no impact on progress - so why do it? The kids barely read it and respond even less willingly. They, too, know that what counts is the mark on their test paper. So why not give them exactly that?

Verbal feedback - actual, built-in time to speak to students about their work during the lesson - has far more impact on progress than any book marking.

There are outstanding schools with a no-marking policy.

yes yes yes yes yes to the no pointless or pointlessly padded meetings! I

And do encourage healthy work life balance!

Got another one : encourage debate, read research, try to listen to the opinions of others without feeling threatened , but don't knee jerk react to Ofsted etc. Create forums for genuine discussion. Don't put SLT spies in every meeting!

And stop the endless senseless rule of data.

I don't necessarily agree with all this technology stuff. please don't create a school ruled by tech... that can be even more bureaucratic and introduce things for the sake of it. I agree the focus should be on enabling teachers to do their job by supporting behaviour, being visible and knwoing your stuff. Endless fads and initiatives should be resisted - or at least SLT should ask how they will benefit everyone first.

Just be supportive.

Stop blaming staff for shit results of kids we all know have not worked for 5 years - despite having every opportunity thrown at them ...

Appreciation for teaching assistants- back them up. Too many times a student would be incredibly rude to a TA or support staff and nothing would be done, yet the same student would do the same to the SMT and they get a day’s exclusion. Just means no respect from the student to the support staff and no respect from the support staff to SMT.

Seating planner is good and integrates SEN, PP, ESL from Sims. Show my Homework- also saves money on planners.

Do cover lessons, gives more of a presence to the students.

I don't think that is only TAs that SLT do that to, tissue. Ours get excluded if they are rude to SLT or the head's PA. Anyone else... don't expect supprt and make sure you detail every single bloody action you took.

It's all about SLT being visible, visibly supportive and remembering what it is actually like being in a classroom, to summarise I guess OP!

Recognise the hard work HODs put in to keeping things running well. I’m not in the UK but I am fed up of the SLT and principal saying how hard they have it and not recognising that we are working hard as well. A bit of recognition and praise costs nothing! (Obviously a bit cross about this at the mo)

I’m a supply teacher in an area with a number of ofsted outstanding schools. Going from one to another, the differences in marking policies, support for children with additional needs, levels and depth of planning and attitudes to staff is remarkable. One may have secure, confident staff. Another may be full of stressed and depressed members being bullied into producing results dictated by SLT.
Organic and free-range verses intensive factory farmed.

Don’t introduce new technology (we seem to have new systems thrown at us every year) and have the training be 10 minutes in the hall from a powerpoint. No one remembers.

Centralise detentions. Please. We used to, we don’t any more, and with some kids you give them a detention and it’s like booking a meeting with the Queen. “Can’t do Thursday, that’s my tech detention, Friday is head of year, what about next Tuesday?”. When you have crappy classes you end up losing a lot of free time to either giving detentions or chasing up kids who don’t attend - it’s a big workload issue. Or you end up avoiding giving kids detentions because you know you have a shedload of stuff to do.