ASCL General Secretary Geoff Barton will today (Saturday 10
March) declare war on excessive teacher workload as part of a
joint effort with the government to tackle the recruitment and
retention crisis in our schools and colleges.
Mr Barton will open the second day of the annual conference of
the Association of School and College Leaders in Birmingham ahead
of speeches from education secretary and Ofsted chief inspector
Amanda Spielman. The three speakers will then jointly discuss how
they will address the workload pressure on teachers and leaders.
Mr Barton will tell delegates: “We call upon government and other
agencies to do all they can to reduce the bureaucratic burden on
teachers and leaders, to work with us to recalibrate
accountability, to measure what we value and not just value what
can be measured.
“But it’s not just about them. It’s also about us. At its heart,
teacher workload is an issue for us as leaders: we hold all the
cards. In the short-term, that’s about doing what we can to strip
out the meetings, administration and monitoring practices that
deflect teachers from their core classroom purpose.
“In the longer term, we’re the generation who needs to redefine
what it is to be a teacher in the twenty-first century, to make
sure we don’t become the Luddite profession, doing things in the
way we’ve always done them.
“We need to explore how technology and artificial intelligence
can take some of the routine activities from teachers’ lives,
providing more nuanced assessment feedback, freeing teachers to
work directly with their classes of young people.”
He will say that too few people want to become teachers and too
many leave the profession too early. “We are losing good people
of deep experience – people who have taught and retaught topics
and skills, honing their practice, refining their craft, and
becoming ever better as teachers. We need more people like them
in our classrooms,” he will say.
In addition to tackling teacher workload, he will call for other
measures to address the crisis.
He will say: “Routes into teaching currently feel to the outsider
more complicated than locating the Da Vinci code. The entry
process needs to be made simpler, the career strategy more
coherent. It’s why ASCL welcomes the Department’s proposals for
strengthening qualified teacher status and teachers’ continuing
professional development. It’s part of a process of further
professionalising our profession.
“And we have to tell a better story about teaching – to the world
outside but also within our schools and colleges.
“After fifteen years of headship, I now regret that I didn’t
appropriate an assembly each year for this purpose – asking
members of staff at different points in their career to talk
about why they became teachers, what they love about the job,
their memorable moments, and the teacher who had inspired them.
From fresh-faced trainee to the grizzled staffroom veteran –
they’d be united in articulating the pleasures of the job to an
audience of young people who perhaps hadn’t thought of teaching
as a career.”
