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Workload taskforce: Will we finally get a grip on teacher workload?

Workload Pay and conditions Trade unions Government policy
Just 1% of teachers and 10% of support staff say their workload is manageable all the time. Daniel Kebede says the work of the government’s workload taskforce must be a priority in the coming months
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When I look back at our recent pay dispute, I remember the commitment of our members not only to the children they teach and their ambitions for them, but also their frustration with workload intensity and extremely long working hours.

Full time leaders work an average of 57.5 hours per week, while full-time teachers average 51.9 hours per week (Adams et al, 2023) – it is not surprising that workload is the number one reason given by educators for leaving the profession.

The recruitment and retention crisis would appear to be unending. It is damaging learning every day and making it harder for schools to deliver consistent learning and to employ or replace teachers qualified in the subject they teach.

It is a waste of talent and taxpayers’ money to allow this situation to continue.

This is not simply a 9-to-5 job. A much greater weight of responsibility has been placed on teachers in recent years. I am not so long out of the classroom that I don’t remember the growing demand for pupil support, all set against a chronic shortage of resources. Local authorities are overwhelmed with waiting lists, demand far exceeding supply.

It drives us to despair that the government simply does not get the pressure we are under in schools and colleges – not only to teach but to meet the needs of young people every single day.

So, it is not just pay that drives teachers and support staff out of the profession, but workload. The UK’s Working Time Regulations stipulate a maximum of 48 working hours per week, but we know that our members are regularly exceeding this.

In our most recent State of Education survey (NEU, 2023), 48% of our teacher members – including school leaders – told us that their workload is “unmanageable” and for a further 34% it is “only just manageable”.

For support staff, around half (49%) find workload manageable most or all of the time. Just 1% of teachers and 10% of support staff told us that their workload is manageable all the time.

But don’t just take our word for it. The Department for Education’s irregularly published teacher workload surveys have been a point of embarrassment for many years.

Back in April it became clear that their most recent edition of the survey (Adams et al, 2023) had been suppressed from public view and released only after the submission of evidence to the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) had taken place.

When considering teachers’ pay for this academic year, it would have been highly instructive for the STRB to have known that one in four teachers are considering quitting and two in five leaders (43%) and one in five teachers (19%) are working at least 60 hours per week.

The survey also showed that two-thirds of teachers (66%) reported that more than half of their working time was spent on tasks other than teaching. Among secondary teachers, this was 77% of their working time.

We remain of the view that if this survey report had been made public sooner, it would have seriously undermined the government’s argument for continued pay restraint.

A succession of education secretaries have been charged with tackling workload – but they have all failed to get to grips with it.

We were pleased, however, to hold constructive discussions during the recent pay dispute. Settling with the government in July was conditional on that work continuing.

To that end, the current education secretary Gillian Keegan has set up a Workload Reduction Taskforce (see DfE, 2023) to explore the DfE’s aim to reduce teachers’ and leaders’ working hours by five hours a week within three years.

The taskforce brings together representatives of education unions including the National Education Union. Initially, it will make immediate recommendations on admin tasks and the impact of the independent workload reviews, which were commissioned by the DfE more than five years ago and which looked at planning, marking and data management.

This will be followed by final recommendations from the taskforce in March 2024.

The government needs to understand that this is an issue of high importance to teachers and teaching unions and we will continue to press for real change.

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