With teacher recruitment significantly down on the previous year, and teacher retention continuing to pose a challenge for leaders in all settings across the country, one of the main contributors has been the ever-mounting workload that teachers face and the impact this has.
With teacher workload significantly impacting mental health and wellbeing, this has worsened during the pandemic with teachers struggling to keep pace with workload, home-schooling and the TAG and CAG processes.
So, as we slowly started to return to some version of normal over the last 6 months, is it time to refocus and set our sights on improving wellbeing across education? How can we do this?
Well, firstly, why not look at the balance of when work is set and the time that is given to complete it? Why not look at fundamentally restructuring the academic calendar? It’s no secret that teachers are more relaxed, recharged and refreshed after longer holiday periods (Christmas, Easter and the summer break), so why not make all holidays 2 weeks in length?
By decreasing the summer break, the time saved could be spent giving an additional week to the October, February and May/June half term, leaving a 3 week break in the summer. There may be those who would complain about this, but let’s look at that long summer break. Holiday prices soar, meaning it is much more expensive to go on holiday during this period; the 6–7-week length of the summer break also means that even the most spendthrift families struggle to save sufficient funds to entertain children at all times and a 6–7-week break wouldn’t necessarily be needed as teachers (and students) wouldn’t suffer the possibility of burnout due to 2 week breaks every half term.
On the point of holidays, could the government introduce a national scheme in which teachers receive discounts when booking holidays? With teacher salaries remaining mostly stagnant for the last 15 years, this would represent an investment in teachers and could potentially significantly boost recruitment and retention. A serial gripe amongst teachers, having to pay upwards of twice the term time cost for holidays is something which causes significant stress and anxiety among teachers with and without children.
More controversially, why not use existing remote/online learning tools to support students to complete more independent study? Finishing the school day at 2pm and giving students the time and resources to complete work independently would likely mean less preparation, teaching and marking time would be required as, with developments in remote learning since Covid, the majority of online learning tools have self-assessment options, or self-mark any work completed. This would also help to address one of the serial complaints from the majority of teachers, that students are too reliant on teachers and teaching to support their education and lack some of the necessary skills to achieve independently.
Something which has been enormously successful where it has been trialled (in education and in other sectors), giving more opportunities for flexible learning would significantly benefit all teachers. Introducing simple schemes in which all teachers are given a number of days leave during term time would be a start. If teachers were to do this on days with minimal teaching, and funding for supply could be provided or colleagues could cover sessions (and return this favour when other teachers took time away from school/college), this would have little impact on students but massively support teacher wellbeing.
On top of this, opportunities to complete fully funded qualifications or CPD opportunities would have a similar benefit. Even just the opportunity to collaborate with staff in other schools (or even in other sectors) would likely have significant impact. The investment in teachers and giving teachers the opportunity to really investigate their areas of interest within the profession, could have significant impact on wellbeing.
Regardless of the steps taken to support teachers, clearly this is something which needs immediate review. Though workload support has been attempted by the DfE in the past, it has not come close enough to tackling a problem which exists in all sectors, at all levels of education.
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About the author
Jonathan Kay
Jonny Kay is Head of Teaching, Learning and Assessment at a college in the North East. He has previously worked as Head of English and maths in FE and as an English teacher and Head of English in Secondary schools. He tweets @jonnykayteacher and his book, 'Improving Maths and English in Further Education: A Practical Guide', is available now.
