The why
The 2023 Department for Education survey found that 40,000 teachers – almost 9% of the teaching workforce – left state schools in the 2021-22 school year, before the age of retirement; this was the highest number since it began publishing the data in 2011. Whilst there are probably a number of reasons for this, the main one teachers cite is workload.
Maybe partly in response to the exodus of teachers from the profession, in July 2023 the Government published a report written by Richard Churches and Rachael Fitzpatrick for the Education Development Trust entitled ‘Workload reduction in schools in England’. The Government’s stated ambition in publishing the report was to reduce by five hours the average teacher working hours – as they believed them to be – of 48.7 hours per week.
In April 2023, The Independent published this headline, reporting a poll of 8000 teachers that had been carried out by one of the teaching unions, the NASUWT: ‘Teachers work 54 hours a week on average and most say workload has risen – poll’.
We need to reduce teacher workload for both practical reasons and wellbeing reasons: practically, the profession cannot cope with the loss of such high numbers of teachers – that’s partly what has exacerbated the teacher recruitment crisis we are facing at the moment (for some subjects where we advertise a teaching vacancy, we feel fortunate if we get one application). In terms of wellbeing, it’s obvious that workload is a key contributor, so as leaders we are duty-bound to give it our constant attention. Put simply, we need to reduce teachers’ workload because it is too high; teaching is already a tough job and an unreasonable workload makes it even tougher.
The How?
Joe Kirby wrote a blog in 2015 on reducing teacher workload and in it he talked about ‘Hornets’ and ‘Butterflies’.
Hornets being high effort, low impact routines, such as: labour-intensive written marking; hours of planning spent creating whizzy worksheets and PowerPoint slides that may be used once; creating fancy displays; completing unnecessary and/or lengthy paperwork; writing individual lesson plans; and completing word-laden reports.
Butterflies being lower effort, high-impact routines, such as: using knowledge organisers for retrieval practice/homework; giving oral feedback and doing judicious ‘live’ marking in class; teacher-led instruction; and my favourite: using textbooks.
Textbooks are written by experts over a significant amount of time. They are carefully constructed to not only cover the curriculum (often called the ‘specification’ in KS4 and 5), but to cycle back to previous learning to provide regular retrieval practice. Admittedly, textbooks can’t be used in all subjects, but they can be used in most subjects, and they should be. Not slavishly, of course, but they should be the staple diet.
I think my school does aim to reduce the hornets and promote the butterflies, but do we do it enough? And well enough? I often wonder.
