“If I'd carried on, I wouldn't be doing this right now.”
How teachers have changed the way they work to reclaim their time.
This short film features ideas on how teachers can manage their workload better to free up time.
In just three years Harris Academy in Greenwich went from special measures to outstanding. But this achievement came at a cost for the teaching staff.
Executive Principal George McMillan says: “I stood up in front of the staff and said; 'We've now got Outstanding from Ofsted, we're top 10% of the country, but is anyone having any fun?' and there was a kind of tumbleweed moment.” After that Principal McMillan went about making dramatic changes to benefit teachers, taking the pressure off exam results and making sure staff were leaving the school by 5:30pm.
One of the main issues around workload for teachers is the amount of marking that needs to be done.
For English teacher Zoe Egan, the pressure at her previous school to always be marking books made her ill. Zoe says: “That was the point I realised that something needs to change.” After moving to Harris Academy, Zoe began feeding back to students instead of marking every book. Zoe says; “What we do is we will look at a collection of books. We will work out strengths, the weaknesses, focus in on one weakness and deliver a lesson based upon improving that one weakness. You are not spending six to ten hours marking one set of books, but you can do it in 20 minutes, and it's really good feedback.”
Charlie Claridge teaches at Broughton Junior School and struggled initially with his time management, so he adopted a new approach to lesson planning. Charlie says: “My colleague plans maths and I plan English. And through that we just have trust in each other…” This has helped Charlie enjoy his work and improve his time management: “I understand that you can take advice from other teachers and other lessons and sort of let go a little bit.”
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