On my CPD sessions, I will often reference this TUC survey that found that two out of five teaching staff worked 26 hours for free each week, which equates to around about £15,000 a year of unpaid overtime.
Now, I know there’s an unwritten rule in education that no teacher ever works their contracted hours. And I know teachers don’t mind doing extra if they know the work they’re gonna do is gonna have a direct impact on teaching, learning. Frustration for me and I’m sure plenty of other teachers is of those 26 hours extra a week that so many teachers work, so little of it have impact on the students. So in that case, who we doing it for? You were to list who we’re doing that work for, do you know who’d come out at the bottom? Students now, don’t be wrong, are contracted hours is mostly focused on this. Absolutely. But all those extra hours, all that extra workload teacher are expected to do, I think they would be at the bottom of the list of actually who we’re doing it for. So let’s now run through a list of who we’re actually doing all this extra work for.
Now, you know, I love my technology, and I encourage teachers to embrace it and use it cuz it can help in lots of ways. But if you do not implement it correctly, it will add to your workload, especially in relation to parents. There are some parents who expect teachers to be at the Beck and call and answer messages through tools like Clasto, Joe Seesaw, Tapestry, whatever it might be. If you don’t set those expectations correctly when you roll those tools out, parents, some parents will take advantage of that and that will add to your workload. Next one teaches themselves we can be our own worst enemy. And what I mean by this is some teachers are petrified of moving away from what they’ve always done and therefore can end up doing the same task numerous times just out of fear of familiarity. It’s a habit, and it’s hard to break the habit of a lifetime.
Now next on the list, I’d say the Dfe and the government. Despite them saying they’ve got workload part, is this that another, they come out with new initiatives, they have cut funding to so many other areas, meaning that schools have to step up and are seen as the answer to all of the failings in our society, which then it increases our workload because we’re having to be the answer and we’re having to sort out issues from the lack of funding in other areas, stop senior leadership teams, and I won’t make it clear, this is distinct difference between leaders and bosses. So here I’m talking about SLTs who are bosses who aren’t trusting teachers to do the job the capable of doing and is therefore forcing them to waste so much time constantly evidencing and proving that they’re doing the job. And if you are an effective SLT, you create that trust in your staff and therefore are at actively reducing workload to give teachers that time back. And at the top of my list are these charlatans.
Now, I’m not saying it’s always directly from them. Some toxic slts will use offset as an excuse to get teachers to do all this extra work, but their inspection framework has not made any teacher’s lives easier. Their inspection framework over the past few years, has created and added to our workload ridiculous amounts. You can’t just be a teacher anymore. You’ve now got to be an expert in a subject that most of us didn’t study past GCSE, and you’ve got to know that subject inside out, how it’s being taught across a whole school, have reams and reams of evidence to show the progression being made. And you’re telling me that’s all gonna happen within our working hours of teaching? Are you joking me? So what frustrates me is they’ve got the audacity to come into schools and ask about workload and well being when they’re the main reason directly or indirectly, why workflows continue to go through the roof exponentially over the past few years.
Would you add anyone else to this list and like say this is about the extra work teachers end up doing. Who are we doing that work for? And I think it is in that list that’s at the top, going down to students.