Teachers burned out? Drowning in workload and abused by pupils?

[noblegiraffe]

Never fear, the DfE have a solution:

A panel to investigate and give a report as early as next year.

And how many classroom teachers are on the panel might you ask? I think you can guess!

schoolsweek.co.uk/revealed-the-expert-panel-members-tasked-with-improving-teacher-wellbeing/

Here’s my solution: more non-contact time, Ofsted outstanding grading to be scrapped, centralised detention systems to be mandatory, increase the number of PRUs and make heads and SLT personally responsible for teacher turnover at their school.

Not my solution: cakes in the staff room. Yoga and mindfulness sessions during INSET. Headteacher saying ‘Good job everyone’.

More non-contact time would be the last thing to be introduced I reckon. More non-contact time requires more teachers and we already don’t have enough!

Same problem with the current drive to improve part-time working opportunities.

need more that's true for me too really. I love the bit in the classroom with the kids, it's the marking and other things that tip me over. The expectation at my school in my department is that every book is marked every week, well I've got 7 classes and each set of books takes between 1&2 hours to mark so that's 7-14 hours of marking I'm supposed to fit in each week, on top of planning decent lessons. We do have textbooks which reduces the planning time a bit if you can find a decent exercise on the topic you are teaching. But I'm also still trying to get to grips with the new ALevel (I'm teaching some sections I haven't gone through yet next year, so will have to learn them over the summer).

Here’s my solution: more non-contact time, Ofsted outstanding grading to be scrapped, centralised detention systems to be mandatory, increase the number of PRUs and make heads and SLT personally responsible for teacher turnover at their school

All amazing ideas - plus the funding to pay for it.
I will begin my teacher training in September (Dh thinks I’m crazy and he may have a point). The training course I’m on has told us all the days of 7am to 7pm working with more done at night at home is a thing of the past. I’m reserving judgement till I see the reality for myself.

I really like the idea of making the SLT responsible for staff turnover at the school.

I suspect that it will bring a whole new load of BS initiatives, Whilst at the same time ignoring the root cause of the problems.

I also suspect that in the end it will be written in such away that it will become a tick box exercise.

Not my solution: cakes in the staff room. Yoga and mindfulness sessions during INSET. Headteacher saying ‘Good job everyone’.

Love it!

The training course I’m on has told us all the days of 7am to 7pm working with more done at night at home is a thing of the past.

What?

Who is telling you this?

Do you genuinely believe that things used to bad in teaching (when?) but they are ok now? Since when? What are they telling you has changed?

This gov.uk page claims that current teachers are on the panel but then doesn’t list any!

Nothing is a thing of the past I’m teaching. And I suspect that the number of schools that have done something about workload/ work life balance are vastly outnumbered by the schools that haven’t.

Who is telling you this

As I said my training provider.

Do you genuinely believe that things used to bad in teaching (when?) but they are ok now? Since when? What are they telling you has changed

Again as I said Dh thinks I’m mad and I’ve admitted he may well have a point. I don’t think things are ok now, not even close to it.

My gut feeling is that the training provider is being very optimistic. She said there is a drive to reduce teacher workload to improve. She has given example of schools who have reduced their marking workload and data analysis.
I think I’m her head this school is a trailblazer, and will lead the way to reduced workloads in surrounding schools. This seems optimistic to me. As I’ve already said, I’ll reserve judgement till I’ve seen more.

Teacher Tapp asked about what schools were doing to reduce workload on Friday. About a third have done nothing.

The most popular change was a less stupid marking policy. I would like to think that this is done soley with teacher workload in mind, but I think it’s more likely because Ofsted came out and said triple marking was a pile of crap.

But even then Ofsted didn’t really go far enough. You can still have a stupid marking policy as long as your teachers are following your stupid policy.

Did anything ever come of the workload survey a few years back?

Or was the outcome to do another workload survey??

Do you really not remember the outcome of the teacher workload survey? It was classic.

The result was to produce a teacher workload reduction toolkit that they published at the start of the summer holidays.

You honestly couldn’t make it up.

www.gov.uk/guidance/reducing-workload-in-your-school

Looks like a fuck tonne of paperwork, staff meetings and audits to me!

A brilliant way to reduce workload.

I took part in another workload survey this year, in about March/April I think. I do know it was an extra half hour of work to complete it in a week where I'd already worked 70 hours (I remember that number because I had to work it out and was shocked how high it was). We were all encouraged to do it, so the DfE got properly representative data. I'm not thrilled if this is the result though, a panel of experts, without many/any actual classroom teachers involved.

I've been doing a course this year, first time in 15 years I've been allowed out of school for professional development. On that course, out of 16 teachers who started the course in September, 2 have found jobs outside teaching now, 1 is going on mat leave soon and will return part time if she returns at all, and 5 are changing schools in a last chance way and are prepared to leave teaching if it's no better in the new school. That's quite a damning percentage who are struggling to that degree, and it doesn't include the rest of us who are stressed as well, but prepared to continue in the hope that things get better.

Our marking policy isn't bad as far as they go, except for the statement that homework will be marked for every pupil every week. I can mark in whatever colour I like, I don't have to do www or ebi statements, etc. BUT I'm not convinced those hours of marking are truly beneficial for the pupils. Knowing what they've struggled with is important, but actually, I mostly know what they need more practice with from my assessments within lessons.

researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-7222/CBP-7222.pdf

This is quite an interesting summary of all of the things that the government has tried and failed to improve recruitment and retention. Spending thousands on trying to persuade ex-teachers back into to the classroom with the ‘return to teaching’ program was a particularly interesting read.

“the number of returners was low and the cost per additional returner was similar to that of training a new teacher.

So, money well spent then.

It’s such a mess.

To be fair, some of those listed could be teachers on a sabbatical working for a union. Or something. clutches at straws

I'm leaving classroom teaching in two weeks' time because I don't feel I'm ever going to have a decent work- life balance otherwise. Plus, wellbeing at some schools is a joke. I left a school where you were allowed to take a PPA day at home once a half-term to a place where the head treated me like crap in a way that had I treated a pupil like that I'd have probably been suspended and/or put on capability.

This group is a joke. We don't need them to look into ways to improve teacher wellbeing, just ask any teacher as this thread proves.

I always despair at the ‘solutions’ that involve putting the most focus and funding on getting new people into teaching.

Reward us poor sods who are actually doing the job and maybe we won’t leave in droves!

It grates when those training can often be paid more than those doing the training, for example. And then they wonder why PGCE trainees actually going on to get jobs is falling in some subjects because some of the trainees just take the years tax free bursary then leave!!

If any of the sensible suggestions for reducing pointless workload are taken up by this committee, I’ll eat my hat.

Oh, they'll come up with all manner of recommendations but without enforcing anything, headteachers and CEOs are just acting with complete autonomy. So some schools are nicer to work in than others.

That's the issue. Ofsted can say that they don't want to see lesson plans until they're blue in the face, but now academies can do what they like they can demand teachers submit detailed planning for every lesson and use it as a stick to beat with if it's not done (and actually, so can non-academies). There's no one place to say "do this, don't do that" and schools have to follow what is said. They can do what they bloody like and no group sitting talking about it for a year is going to change that.

Yep-what is needed is some sort of central body that is in charge of and responsible for all schools in their area.

We could call it an education authority? Based locally. Oh, hang on...

@fedup21 @ThereWillBeAdequateFood

I can actually believe it. I remember doing my PGCE and we finished nearly on a full NQT timetable. PGCEs now finish on 11 hours which also includes some team teaching. 🤷‍♀️

I work in a decent school that have always retained staff but this year I feel a shift. People are definitely becoming more unsettled and beaten down.

I work in a decent school that have always retained staff but this year I feel a shift. People are definitely becoming more unsettled and beaten down

That’s awful cheesecake any idea what’s caused the shift?

Ofsted are wary of mandating any particular policy or teaching style because they’ve shot themselves in the foot with that sort of thing in the past.

Because schools are supposed to have autonomy, it’s unlikely that the DfE will make any pronouncements that would have an impact (only 1 morning briefing allowed per week, oh the endless joy that would bring) and will instead come out with guff like ‘should consider a no emails at evenings and weekends’ policy (no no no that’s when I do my work). Or ‘consider leaving before 5 one day a week’ (and save your marking for the next day).

@noblegiraffe Our “Summer social” is compulsory. We even once had an INSET where we all had to tally up our teaching hours, PPA, management time, parents’ evening hours, compulsory events etc and then SLT “revealed” the statutory directed time hours. This exercise was supposed to make us grateful that they weren’t making us work every single hour, but it had an air of “But we might...”

The solutions some schools come up with in the name of “wellbeing” is laughable. My friend works in a school where all teachers had to go on a compulsory 3 evening mindfulness workshop. My own school lists biscuits in the staffroom and free lunches for staff as examples of great wellbeing strategies the school uses to look after staff 🙄

It will be interesting to see exactly what schools are expected to waste money on in the name of teacher wellbeing.