Ask any teacher colleague what the big issue of the day is and they will tell you that workload pressure wears them down, exhausts them, creates anxiety.
Why has workload become such a concern? Teachers are conscientious and dedicated. We have always spent many more hours than we should engaged in preparation for lessons that we hope will be productive, engaging and effective. We love to teach. It takes over our lives; school becomes like a second family.
The problem is that a relentless, insidious fear has started to creep in that whatever I am doing in my classroom is not enough. Will my colleagues down the corridor achieve more in terms of measurable outcomes? Will they receive a pay award because their data look stronger? Will their children be better behaved in assembly? Will their pupils’ parents tell the leadership team that their teaching is better than mine? Will the school achieve the grade it seeks during mocksteds and Ofsted? Will the banner on the front fence need to be taken down in the dead of night if the school judgement changes? The gut-wrenching fear that I will be the one that spoils it for everyone else.
The pressure we feel as individuals comes from a collective fear.
How would it be if we found the authoritative voice we need to enable us to make measured decisions about what we should do more of and what we can reasonably leave behind?
What would the impact be of school leaders recognising the importance of helping their colleagues to choose to spend their precious time focusing on the core business of pedagogy, instead of proving their worth via record-keeping, endless marking and completion of tick-box measurement? The Chartered College of Teaching has been established to give all teachers and leaders access to research evidence. Working collaboratively, we seek to place classrooms at the heart of our professional body. We want to rigorously explore theory and practice that demonstrably has an impact on children’s learning.
As our membership grows, our capacity to shift the debate will build. We will share findings, amplifying examples of classrooms where children and their teachers learn without limits. The prize is great. As we grow our expertise, we will articulate not only what we are seeking to teach, but also the rationale for our pedagogical decisions. We will start to be in a position to reject activity that removes energy from our core purpose. We will remind ourselves why we joined the teaching profession in the first place.
Last term I had a conversation with an experienced headteacher. He was excited to talk about his school but was at pains to tell me that nothing was perfect. He was worried about recruitment, test results, the perception of parents, the administrative demands that routinely swallowed him up.
I listened to him carefully and heard the self-doubt, the exhaustion, the fear of failure. My heart went out to him, but the problem is that school leaders in this position inevitably transfer pressure to their teachers who then, in turn, transfer this to their pupils.
We need to build professional courage to take decisions that we know will benefit our teaching and our children; courage inspired by strengthening our professional knowledge and expertise. We must connect nationally, engaging with each other to support effective teaching. Through being informed and confident, we can be brave: we can change the fear into pride. Ultimately, the way to tackle workload will be to do less, whilst achieving more. Let’s make that happen.
Dame Alison Peacock is chief executive of the Chartered College of Teaching. She tweets @alisonmpeacock
