Your guide to managing staff wellbeing

The Key for School Leaders
Your guide to managing staff wellbeing
Reducing paperwork for teachers:
examples from schools
Are there examples of schools that
have reduced teacher paperwork
to a minimum?
Example of a school where
lesson-planning time has
been reduced
We spoke to the headteacher of William Tyndale
Primary School, an academy in Islington, about
how her school has reduced the amount of
paperwork that teachers are required to complete.
She explained that when she arrived at the school,
teaching required improvement and teachers were
overloaded with work. To focus on improving the
quality of teaching, it was important to free up
teachers’ time from administrative tasks such as
writing lesson plans.
Teachers are not required to write lesson plans for
every lesson, and plans are not scrutinised by the
senior leadership team (SLT). However, teachers
do write an overview for each term. The school’s
computer system is used for medium and longterm
planning, which can be helpful, for example,
when teachers change year groups or when cover
staff have to take classes.
Because of these changes, teachers have more
time to focus on developing the quality of their
teaching – for example, through the ‘lesson study’
approach, which allows groups of teachers to
plan and observe lessons together. According to
the headteacher, there is more dialogue between
teachers and sharing of good practice. She said
there is a higher level of trust, and teachers
take more responsibility to ensure the quality of
teaching and learning in their classes is high.
The headteacher explained that standards have
not been compromised as a result of reducing the
amount of paperwork. At its most recent Ofsted
inspection, the school was rated ‘outstanding’.
Link on our website
Home, William Tyndale Primary School
Workload challenge: strategies
to tackle workload
A document outlining the government response to
the workload challenge survey conducted by the
Department for Education (DfE) (see page 6 of this
booklet) sets out some of the strategies used by
schools to tackle workload.
Strategies relating to reducing paperwork include:
• Reducing written lesson plans (for example, by
introducing the ‘five-minute lesson plan’ from the
@TeacherToolkit blog)
• Collaborating to plan and develop new schemes
of work
• Sparing use of more detailed marking and written
feedback
• Effective use of whole-school data management
systems
• Effective use of support staff, for example by
removing administrative tasks from those with
pupil-facing roles
The full list of strategies is in annex C of the
document, on page 22.
Link on our website
Government response to the workload
challenge, GOV.UK – DfE (Adobe pdf file)
This booklet features
a selection of articles
we’ve written in
response to school
leaders’ questions.
Over 3,500 up-todate
articles are
currently available
online on www.
thekeysupport.com/SL
à Article continues
on p.14
Not yet tried The Key for School Leaders?
You can try it for free at www.thekeysupport.com/free
Ready to join? Save £100
Membership covers everyone in your leadership team and starts at just £45 per month. Join The
Key for School Leaders quoting WB16 before 24 March 2016 and we’ll waive the £100 joining
fee. Contact us on 0800 060 7732 or school.leaders@thekeysupport.com.
Not yet tried The Key for School Leaders? www.thekeysupport.com/free
13