Teacher workload cut by 5 hours a week since 2016

[noblegiraffe]

...claims the DfE.

www.gov.uk/government/news/teacher-workload-cut-by-five-hours-a-week-over-past-three-years

Is this your experience? Mine feels like it has increased in that time. We’ve had a new head and they are definitely making more demands of us.

Increased hugely. 2017/18 and 18/19 broke me and I’ve got out. I used to have a vague semblance of a life until 2012ish.

Mine has... Because I went part time (0.8). But I still have to work 75% of weekends and some evenings in exam season.
I feel we have more pointless things to do: extensive comments on seating plans to cover how you are supporting any child with additional needs/ info rather than trusting us to just do it; extra cpd stuff; more duties; extra evenings and so on...

And we all have to do 1period of cover per week because we can't afford adequate staffing. But that's another story for another day.

Oh yes I forgot the workload created by teachers going off with stress or handing in their notice and not being able to hire a qualified replacement. That’s happened more recently.

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

I have to laugh to things like this or I'll cry. Workload has increased stupidly imo.

Haha haha

Mine has gone up and my whole department would concur. I am lucky as I have good PPA but those who don't are creaking under the strain. 5 or 6 years ago the office was pretty quiet before 8 am. Now lots of people are in well before that. And many don't leave until 6.30. It's the data gathering , the planning, the new specs in that time which have led to a lot of planning. In the case of my school there has been an increase in meetings, too.

Increased. We have so many assessments that we can't even teach the content before we're being made to assess the kids. And then we get asked why the results are so bad in the assessments. It's ridiculous, and so time consuming.

That sounds about right , remus!

Ashamed to say I am one of the people who is responsible as my school did that survey. They got to pick the week though. You reported your hours in that particular week : the idea being that otherwise people make their hours up (which can cut both ways) or guesstimate.

Was it also your school in 2016, piggy?

No... which is interesting , isn't it!?

I also know hardly anyone did it because they were too busy!!

Oh god so the only people doing it were probably working fewer hours anyway?

If I thought that the DfE had any sort of long term vision, I’d suspect they could have asked a bunch of Harris academy type schools in 2016 then less notorious ones in 2019 to show ‘progress’.

I don't know why my school was asked...it is interesting!

Primary teacher and my workload has increased. I feel like part social worker and part teacher more than ever.

I can see why SLT workload has been reported as decreased. Certainly at my school the received opinion is they do less actual work than us, keep the same, if not shorter hours than us and are pushing back nearly all behaviour issues to departments.

It doesn’t always feel like it but workload associated with classroom teaching has definitely decreased at my school. When I first started teaching ten years ago we had written lesson plans, more observations, we marked exercise books, wrote detailed written feedback on assessments and the style of teaching that was in vogue was incredibly time consuming in terms of planning and preparation. So much of that stuff has been pared back now.
What I have noticed is that PRP now means that lots of people are now taking on significant whole school responsibilities to support their UPS applications or get experience to help them get a promotion. Things that used to get TLRs are now typically done for no extra pay. I did several years of SLT shadowing with extra duties and an NPQSL before getting my AHT post, and some of the roles I took on were significant responsibilities with no pay attached. It seems to be the norm now for people wanting to move into leadership or be paid on the UPS.

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣l bloody wish

Ha ha, if only. We have bigger class sizes across the board, especially at A level, and no “extra” frees, ie just the 10% allowance.

WhAAAT?? No.

Primary. Increased. More complicated paperwork required to show we are doing this, that and the other in the prescribed ‘this is our brand’ way. Planning for a week’s worth of English lessons can run into 2000 words now. Far more detailed recording of assessments which are also more frequent. A lot more paperwork for subject leadership. Not sure I’ll still be doing this job next year.

The ‘deep dive’ Ofsted stuff at primary must be a huge workload issue.

Who are these teachers working so much less then? The DfE will proclaim the workload problem solved and then wonder why teachers are still leaving.

The UPS thing is true too. I think that’s where my increased workload has come from, doing stuff for performance management.

We have had a new head since half way through last year, and he has been making real attempts to cut workload.

This which he has changed / are changing include

Vast reduction in marking expectations, reduced performance management paperwork , removed sen paperwork , reduced/removed lots of middle leader stuff like simplifying exam reports, removed written reports, removal / reduction in end of year exams + marking. There are some more which I can't remember.

He hasn't really added in much to replace these things, apart from doubling the parents evenings (two night rather than 1 night) to replace the written reports.

I am lucky because our PM is not linked to results, or to pay at all. I hadn't realised how unusual this was until seeing stuff on Mumsnet!

We are one of the 'wave through to UPS' schools.

That is not to say we don't have a high workload : it just isn't linked to that factor. I think there are SLT who would like it to be.