Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the NEU teaching union, is right to keep up the pressure on the government to tackle the problem of workload, but, actually, workload manifests itself in our schools. 

Time and again, research indicates that the biggest influence on pupils’ learning is their teacher. To lose such a valuable resource is reckless, and is likely to impact most on pupils who are already disadvantaged.

The Department for Education has not been inactive following the publication of the workload reports. It has funded short projects within schools to find more efficient and effective ways of carrying out the three main functions of teaching: planning, marking and data collection.

As results of this research have begun to emerge, the teachers involved have participated in presentations to disseminate their knowledge, like, for example, the ”Inside Government” event last summer. More recently, the Department for Education has run a series of events (in venues as far apart as London, Cambridge, Exeter and Manchester) that were free and available to leaders in schools, as part of the drive to share good practice, with more being planned for this term.

My own experience of these events has been extremely positive. The days were about engaging people in professional dialogue about practices and the contexts in which they worked - of course, not everything works for everyone.

Sharing good practice

And because days like this aren’t always possible, the DfE is also amalgamating examples of good practice shared by a number of practitioners online.

These efforts are admirable and involving, but the evidence shows that all these solutions and ways to make education so much more stimulating for pupils and teachers are not gaining traction.

We, therefore, need to find a way to open up trusts and schools to improved practice. When we do so, what’s necessary is a commitment to actually improving pupils’ learning rather than increasing written statements about learning. That’s where the sticking point seems to be at present - it’s very hard to institute change in an isolated school.

Those at the top of multi-academy trusts (MATs) and local authorities (LAs) have the capacity to institute change. Enlightened trusts conduct employee surveys and publish results. The most philanthropic trusts promise results. But what those at the top may think of as the best solutions are not always the ones that teachers prefer.

Well-intentioned initiatives such as yoga classes, based on the belief that exercise improves wellbeing, which will thus impact positively on everyone’s morale and increase capacity for work, are bound to fail. Yoga after a long school day is not everyone’s idea of relaxation, especially since it takes place in the teacher’s own time. 

Ironically, the “solution” would add to the time usurped by excessive workload. It’s not the teacher who needs to be worked on, but the inflationary practice.

Forward-looking trusts could take the initiative by forming committees of senior and middle leaders alongside classroom teachers to represent all schools and bring in managers from head office. A team-working structure and philosophy would treat workload as a problem-solving exercise and reduce some of the inevitable conflicts between leaders and teachers. 

It would be naive to suggest that the existence of these “committees” would be enough to ensure that changes were made. It will take a lot of initial energy in the start-up phase just to find out what the key problems are, and then considerable stamina to go the distance in working out solutions and implementing them across schools in the right measures for specific contexts. The members of the committee would be in for a long and often frustrating ride. But commitment and proactive support from the top would smooth the path considerably.

Change cannot happen effectively if it those at the top have sole responsibility for initiating and implementing it. And it certainly cannot be imposed from the top down, and it must not happen half-heartedly. Everyone needs to be convinced of the benefits and certain of support from the very top of every layer to make it worth the engagement of all teachers.

We are facing a crisis. If we are to improve teacher retention, we should take hold of the opportunity to spread pedagogical dialogue across institutions to keep more teachers feeling more involved in up-to-date research and less victimised by the practices over which they have no jurisdiction.

And no article on workload would be complete without the part that teachers feel least entitled to mention: the return of their precious personal time.

Yvonne Williams is head of English and drama at a school in the south of England and a former member of the workload solutions group investigating marking

She will be presenting a workshop for the National Association for the Teaching of English (NATE), which is holding its 55th annual national and international conference (“So Many Voices, So Many Worlds”) in Birmingham from 22 to 24 June. For details, see www.nate.org.uk