For teachers, just standing in front of a class of children is a full-time job. But when you add in the hours of planning, CPD, marking and building relationships with families – among everything else – it goes way beyond a standard 9am to 5pm working week.
It came as no surprise when the annual School Report (Pearson, 2023) revealed that teacher and school leader workload and teacher recruitment and retention were two of the top three challenges for schools during 2023/24. And workload research from the Department for Education finds that working hours are increasing. It shows that primary school teachers clocked 53.9 hours a week in 2023.
These are challenges that too many schools are facing. A heavy or unmanageable workload is often a contributing factor to teachers deciding to leave their school or indeed the profession.
At Kensington Primary School and The Tapscott Learning Trust, we have come up with some practical solutions that have not only helped to reduce teachers’ workload but have helped the trust to achieve an amazing 98% staff retention rate. And at the time of writing we have no unfilled vacancies! We have achieved this in part by exploring flexible working where possible, introducing collaborative decision-making, and understanding how teachers can use their own knowledge of the classroom to get the most out of their pupils. But how can you achieve this consistency for your school? Here are six ideas...
1, Build a culture of trust
Before assessing workload and exploring how to practically reduce the time teachers spend working, the first step should be to give your staff the flexibility, freedom, and ability to make their own choices. As a profession with limited flexibility, we want to encourage our teachers to understand and communicate what works best for them. By recognising the impact of personal lives and external factors on work, we empower our staff to choose when they finish tasks. Whether it is before the start of the school day, after formal teaching hours, in breaks or if necessary, over the weekend, our teachers have the flexibility to decide what suits them best, allowing them to strike a balance that aligns with their individual needs.
2, Communication and collaboration
It is important to understand what is impacting your teachers and what is restricting them. As an executive headteacher, I can’t tell a teacher what is taking up their time, but they can tell me. Being open to conversations and listening is key. One thing we introduced was a “keep, tweak, ditch” approach, which involves working collaboratively to look at and discuss processes to uncover what could be adjusted, kept, and removed. This allows staff to look through the lens of what makes a difference to children and, although not everyone agrees all of the time, it evokes good-quality conversation allowing us to explore what could and should be adjusted. Being ruthless, differentiating between what has an impact on learning and what actually makes no tangible difference, is vital.
3, Put teachers in control
When it comes to teaching, agency is incredibly important. There certainly is not a one-size-fits-all approach to teaching and we find encouraging our teachers to choose the methods that best suit their style extremely helpful. For example, there are several different formats for lesson planning. Personally, I don’t think it matters what format is used, as long as the lessons are planned well. We have also introduced flexible timetables at one of our schools. Within our broad guidelines, teachers have control over what and when they teach subjects. There are no set lesson times. If a class is incredibly engaged with a lesson and is learning well, teachers can keep the lesson going. There is never a need to halt learning in its tracks because of rigid timetables.
4, Look at your marking methods
Does marking children’s books make a difference? Yes, but that isn’t to say there aren’t some inefficient methods of marking. We have tried various approaches: symbols, marking in the moment, whole class feedback. We continue to approach this in different ways across our trust to best suit the context of our individual schools. For example, in one school, written feedback is kept to a minimum and teachers prioritise high-quality assessment for learning, alongside verbal prompts and guidance in the moment.
5, Promote meaningful relationships
We have been keen to encourage all our staff to build relationships with each other and get to know each other as human beings, instead of just as colleagues. This allows our staff to support each other and feed off one another on a professional and personal level. Building these relationships makes challenging each other professionally easier, with more open communication and a clearer understanding of different perspectives.
6, Think about CPD
CPD is vital, but it can also add to a teacher’s workload, taking time away from their work or personal life. By listening to our staff and understanding their needs, we have minimised meetings taken outside of the school day. We have also focused on making CPD more individualised, allowing agency over the areas teachers want to improve and the type of CPD they want to do. There is nothing worse than spending much-needed school budget on CPD that a teacher isn’t interested in or has no real intention in putting into practice. As a result, not only have we seen greater staff engagement and a more motivated workforce, but it has reinforced our stance on flexibility at work, supporting our belief that teachers should be listened to and respected.
Final thoughts
Much of a teacher’s workload can be offset by allowing them to make decisions based on what they think is right for them (and their pupils). Teaching will always be a profession where your time is split between what is happening in the classroom and what happens because of the classroom – but this by no means has to result in teachers being overwhelmed with work.
- Ben Levinson is director for school and trust development at The Tapscott Learning Trust and executive headteacher at Kensington Primary School. Read his previous articles for Headteacher Update via www.headteacher-update.com/authors/ben-levinson/
Headteacher Update Summer Term Edition 2024
- This article first appeared in Headteacher Update's Summer Term Edition 2024. This edition was sent free of charge to UK primary schools in May 2024. A free-to-access digital edition is also available via www.headteacher-update.com/content/downloads
Further information & resources
- DfE: Research and analysis: Working lives of teachers and leaders: wave 2 summary report, 2024: https://tinyurl.com/5n6u6khn
- Pearson: School report, 2023: https://tinyurl.com/2se98k9e