Rethinking Workload in Schools: Time for a New Approach

There's no denying that educators at the moment are facing ever-increasing workloads. There are a multitude of factors contributing to this, from new curriculums to more students requiring personalised learning plans as well as lack of protocols around emails meaning that communication amongst colleagues, students, and parents has increased. It’s often said that time is what we should be increasing and that, whilst the workload is high, if we had more time we’d be able to get through it all. However, I’m not sure this way of thinking is actually helpful when it comes to devising a much-needed strategy. I don’t think the answer lies in more time, but rather in considering the workload that is taking up the time we have, and perhaps looking at it in terms of importance, urgency, and redistribution.

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Rather than focusing on time, what we need to do is start to reflect on and make changes around how we can redistribute tasks throughout the calendar year. I have two suggestions in mind for this – one which aligns with our current structure of school terms and how things are organised, and a second being an out-of-the-box idea that has required some creative thinking.

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IDEA ONE

In schools, it’s common to do things the way they’ve always been done, at the same time of year, in the same manner and approach. We’re great at adding, but not so great at reimplementing. This is where we see calendars become crowded, workloads closing in, and people being pulled from one task to the next without having time to consider what’s happening in the classroom. We seem to have end-of-year and end-of-term periods which are far more intense than the beginning. We cram things like school camps, assemblies, and end-of-term concerts around the same time as assessment weeks and report writing.

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We treat terms like sprints, requiring everyone to make it to the end, barely holding on, with the two-week break as an opportunity to recover. In some ways, we use this as a form of bribery: “Just keep going, and then you get two weeks’ holiday,” as if this makes everything okay. But it’s not okay to have our educators and school leaders making it to the end of term with nothing left, with the only motivation being a two-week break luring them to the finish line. Instead, we need to rethink the intensity of terms.

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We need to lay out our calendars and start asking ourselves: Do we really have the energy, capacity, and time to carry out all these things well? Perhaps some things can be removed. Perhaps some can be scheduled every second year, rather than every year. Perhaps certain activities could be allocated to specific year groups, rather than having every student across the school doing the same thing. We need to rethink and redesign the intensity across the term to ensure that our leaders and educators have the space, energy, and sustainability to not just make it to the end of the term, but to ensure they feel and work well.

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SECOND SUGGESTION

This proposal is very outside the box and one that doesn’t yet exist, but one I’d like to suggest.

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We all know that many educators are working during their holiday or term break times. We all know that as educators, we don’t get 12 weeks’ holiday each year. In fact, when I started teaching, these term breaks were described to me as time-in-lieu, planning and preparation time, and four weeks’ annual leave over December and January. This made sense to me at the time. I worked intensely – doing things like school camps, parent-teacher meetings, school concerts, and student discos – all outside of our normal working hours. However, with term breaks being reframed as "stand-down" time and an opportunity to recuperate, I could somehow justify it, and found myself using the thinking of 'just make it to holidays, then you can rest'. Over the years, though, I started to realise that the sprint-like mindset required to get through each term was actually unhealthy.

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So, what I’m suggesting is a complete overhaul of how the education system is designed. What if, instead of cramming all the extra tasks like report writing, parent-teacher meetings, assessment marking, professional development, and staff meetings into term time, we removed those and put them into term breaks? What if one week of the two-week term break was spent at school, doing all the extra things – the additional, outside-of-class tasks – and the second week could be spent working remotely? We could use that time to work from home, doing things needed for our own classes and students, but without having to be on-site.

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What this would allow us to do is redistribute the workload so it’s more sustainable. It would enable us to maintain energy throughout the year, rather than just holding on until about week six or seven when everyone starts to crumble, making the last few weeks of term barely manageable. It would mean no late nights during the term, no having to work on weekends while trying to assess and mark within an unreasonable timeframe, and parent-teacher meetings could be conducted during the day, while students aren’t at school, rather than late into the evening.

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I don’t think the issue in education is so much around workload, but rather the intensity with which we’re expected to do it. That said, I know from working with numerous schools that many systems, processes, and structures are lacking. This is because we need to understand that schools are workplaces, not just educational institutions. As leaders, we need to know what our systems and processes (SOPs) are, just like a CEO in business does.

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Yes, there are administrative tasks that can be outsourced, but what I’m referring to here is the core work that we do as educators – the planning, the preparation, the assessing, and the reporting. If we moved the time needed for some of that to outside of term time, I think we would find that our wellbeing would improve.

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Note: I do want to highlight here that, of course, we should be paid for the work we do. Whilst this varies from state to state and system to system, the model I’ve outlined above does not dive into those intricacies. I’m aware that this is a significant factor in how educators across the country work, and this in itself is an issue.

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