A new government taskforce is aiming to cut teachers’ workload by five hours a week to help improve retention and boost the appeal of the profession.
The taskforce, which includes teachers’ unions, professional bodies and school representatives, will meet for the first time this week and is set to make its initial recommendations for workload reductions next month.
Earlier this year, a leaked government report revealed some teachers are working 60 hours or more a week.
In June it was revealed that nearly 9% of the teaching workforce, equivalent to around 40,000 teachers, left state schools last year, while 4,000 teachers retired. The number of unfilled teaching vacancies is also at a record high.
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In August government figures showed it was on track to miss its secondary teacher recruitment targets by nearly half ahead of the new academic year.
According to education publication Tes, the Department for Education is also considering refreshing its recruitment and retention strategy, and how it might support more flexible working in schools.
Trade unions have been sceptical about whether the taskforce will produce systemic change.
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “High levels of workload are driven by the underfunding of the education system, which leaves teachers and leaders doing more work with fewer resources, and an accountability system of inspections and performance tables which is excessive and punitive. In order to genuinely tackle workload there will need to be some readiness on the part of the government to accept and take action to address these problems.
“Change must happen. We simply cannot continue with a situation in which recruitment targets for trainee teachers are constantly missed and where many of the people who join the profession then leave early in their careers.”
Paul Whiteman, general secretary at school leaders’ union NAHT, told the TUC’s Congress last week that the government should “rip up its failed recruitment and retention strategy and replace it with a new vision which restores education as a career graduates aspire to”.
He said: “For school leaders and teachers it’s a vicious cycle, because staffing vacancies add to unsustainable workload and can harm their wellbeing, prompting more to consider their future in what should be a richly rewarding profession.”
Daniel Kebede, general secretary at the National Education Union, said: “No matter the efforts to talk up its education record, this government has been missing its own recruitment targets year after year. This is not a sustainable situation, and the reasons behind it are all too clear. Chronic underfunding, some of the longest working hours in Europe, and real-terms cuts to pay, are driving many out of the profession. Not enough are coming into teaching because less stressful and better paid jobs are available elsewhere.”
Schools minister Nick Gibb said: “We’ve seen rising schools standards over the last decade and that wouldn’t be possible without the work of great teachers.
“We do, however, continue to hear the concerns of teachers and school leaders about workload, which is why we want to build on the past successes in reducing workloads and continue to remove additional burdens, so that teachers can focus on what they do best: teach.”
From today (18 September), members of the NASUWT union are being instructed to work to rule, instructing members to refuse to undertake extracurricular activities, midday supervision, working during lunch breaks, being directed to work on weekends or bank holidays, not doing other tasks during planning, preparation and assessment (PPA) time and refusing to take part in mock inspections.
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