Our research showed that there are ways of reducing teacher workload. Whilst government-led workload expectations can be challenging, we also found that much of the workload is determined by school leaders and so we would encourage all teachers to raise practical workload suggestions with their leaders. Please also share this website with any of your leadership team, including the specific guidance for leaders.
Even without full leadership involvement, eight of the ideas that teachers and leaders in our research came up with are to:
- Create some easier marking strategies, such as peer marking in class, face to face feedback or student self-marking against a template.
- Set realistic expectations in terms of what is achievable in order to have a sustainable workload.
- Prioritise positive student relationships over trying to create “all-singing all-dancing” lessons.
- Use existing resources rather than always creating new ones.
- Pair up with another teacher to create lesson plans or resources together, or to share the workload between you.
- Set and keep clear time boundaries. For example, for some teachers this meant arranging an after-school commitment once a week to help them to get into the habit of leaving on time.
- Recognise workload patterns and plan around these. For example, if the autumn term is always a busy one, avoid taking on new commitments that will need extra work until later in the year.
- Save less important tasks for another time or day.
- But what really matters is what works for teachers and students at your school – what can your team do to reduce workload together?
