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Teachers today are over-burdened with paperwork: notes about courses, books, venues for class visits, offers of educational workshops, updates on school policies, school events and minutes of staff meetings. To help you deal with it, divide it into three groups.
Avoid the overwork trap
The more you do, the more you will find to do, and the more time you spend on the job the more the job swells to take up the time you devote to it. This creates a trap where you can start early, work late and still feel frustrated because you cannot get everything done. Remember that the longer you work, the more you become tired, and both the quality and the quantity of your work deteriorates. So it is essential to have a cut-off time. If you decide to stop every night at 6 or 6.30pm, you will find that the break and a good night’s sleep make you more productive the next day.
Everyone has a period in the day when they work most efficiently. It is important to know when is your optimal period of the day, and make sure you make the most of it, and, of course, try to avoid working when you are tired.
Get the priorities right
In recent years the paperwork load has increased enormously, but fortunately so has teacher support. The expanding role of the classroom assistant has allowed the teacher to delegate more to them, and their going on courses and acquiring a qualification has meant that they are able to accept a share of the teaching role. It is important to make sure that your teaching assistant, nursery nurse or bilingual teaching assistant has a copy of each week’s plan and time spent explaining their tasks for the week is time well spent. Remember the more you show them trust and appreciation for their efforts, the more they will support you.
PPA time has become statutory where before it was a luxury. Assessment has become a more prominent issue than in the past. The good news is that the teacher does not have to organise it as it is a management task to set up the procedure for the whole school. However it is the teacher's responsibility to make certain the assessments are carried out correctly.
Before you start the term it is wise to look at the dates where the assessment procedures have to be carried out and mark them on your calendar and incorporate them into the termly plan. It is important to check that you have dealt with every assessment issue on the weekly plans. It helps to photocopy the list of objectives on the assessment sheet and tick them off as you put them on the plan to avoid leaving anything out.
If you find yourself having to organise a section of assessment, always have a system where the recording is done by either a tick box or highlighting the objectives achieved. Never have a system which involves typing up comments on each pupil.
If you have to keep a daily record of who has achieved the objective in each subject, the quickest way I have found is the 'traffic light' system. Have a grid with names down the side of the page, objectives along the top and mark each box with a highlighter:
It is so easy to become so immersed in heaps of paper that you forget the main reasons why we are in the classroom – the pupils. Unless Ofsted is looming, it is best to keep at the front of your mind that people are much more important than paper. Look after your pupils first and make sure your lessons are interesting and look after the paper after that.
PPA and limits to cover – your new rights
The historic national agreement on Raising standards and tackling workload was signed by government, employers and school workforce unions on 15 January 2003.
The agreement acknowledged the pressure on schools to raise standards and tackle unacceptable levels of workload for teachers and introduced a series of significant changes to teachers' conditions of service to be introduced in three annual phases from September 2003. The agreement delivered joint action from all signatories to achieve its twin aims.
The agreement arose out of social partnership and the workforce agreement monitoring group (WAMG) which is made up of representatives of the signatories, has also overseen its implementation and provided guidance and support to schools and local authorities.
Significantly the agreement does not focus solely on teachers. It acknowledges the vital role played by school support staff and has led directly to the establishment of higher level teaching assistant (HLTA) standards and the certificate in school business management (CSBM). The agreement has also helped create other new roles in schools for adults who support teachers' work and pupils' learning.
The agreement called for a structured change process which would help schools implement the contractual changes and embrace wider workforce reform.
The three phases of contractual changes arising from the agreement for teachers were:
1 September 2003
1 September 2004
1 September 2005
Also, the role of the Implementation Review Unit is to continue its concerted attack on unnecessary paperwork and bureaucratic processes for teachers and headteachers.
That said, with accountability and formal assessment a key feature of our current system, there remains substantial paperwork to be carried out by teachers; lesson plans, individual pupil reports, assessment. ICT may help with these duties but the burden remains firmly on the teacher at present.
This advice was provided for ATL by teaching specialist Hazel Bennett, author of The ultimate teachers handbook. Hazel can be emailed at hazel@hazelbennett.co.uk
Help and support
For further advice on this issue, ATL members can speak to their school rep, their branch secretary or their regional official. They can also call the London (020 7930 6441), Cardiff (029 2046 5000), Belfast (028 9078 2020) or Edinburgh (0131 272 2748) offices or email info@atl.org.uk
For out of hours enquiries, call the out of office hours helpline on 020 7782 1612 (Monday-Friday, 5-8pm during term time).
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