“It’s time to play the music. It’s time to light the lights. It’s time to raise the curtains on The Muppet Show tonight.”

It can feel that way preparing for a lesson. I bet, however, that Miss Piggy had someone to play the music, light the lights and raise the curtains for her. For teachers, it’s up to them to plan, prepare and teach the lesson - then reflect on, mark the work from and fill in the paperwork for the lesson.

While they want to be the most sensational and inspirational, there’s no help backstage. This needs to change. The paperwork and planning are unlikely to decrease, so how about some help with them?

The seemingly ever-changing government guidelines and policies put increasing pressure on an already stretched FE sector. It feels like a shower of pointless paperwork pouring down from government to principals to management until it’s finally dumped on teachers.

Sharing the load

We all know the drill - there’s not enough time for planning and preparation because of additional paperwork. It seems unlikely things will improve for teachers under the current government. So if paperwork is not going away, administrative help must be increased instead.

From my first teaching job I couldn’t understand why there were not more administrative staff. Working at summer school for an English as a foreign language department, most teachers were planning six hours of lessons every night to teach the next day.

Having come from a legal secretarial background, it seemed odd to me that teachers were expected to do admin tasks that could be delegated to others, leaving the teachers to do what they were qualified to do.

I’ve worked in document management departments in law firms. Lawyers would leave work with a coversheet detailing what needed to be done and when it was needed. As a team we prioritised according to urgency and shared the work. We created PowerPoint presentations, set up and managed Excel spreadsheets, reformatted Word documents, proofread, data inputted and transcribed dictation.

Something similar within FE could be transformative to a teacher’s workload. Many teachers are trying to complete admin tasks in the short breaks between lessons. By the time they’ve logged onto the right program and found the right student, it’s time to go back to class or do something equally as urgent. It would be much better time management to have staff that could input student data.

Teacher training rarely covers how to excel at Excel or do the perfect PowerPoint presentation. Teachers may know exactly what they want their presentation to look like but don’t have the skills to make it look that way. If they could explain or draw a brief outline for someone who knew what they were doing, their time could be much better spent elsewhere.

We have all this new technology but are not using it to its full advantage. Imagine the time saved by a teacher using a dictaphone app on their phone to record things like student profiles and reports, who then emails them to admin staff to transcribe and input. Imagine teachers simply leaving a copy of their latest homework or test marks and having someone input them on the correct program.

Less stress

If admin staff were employed to help teachers with their paperwork, it would free valuable time for teachers to get on with what they’re trained to do - teach. There would be time to plan innovative lessons and create resources, which could then be left to someone else to photocopy and cut out. An extra copy of resources and an up-to-date filing system also results in a lesson resource library for teachers to search and share.

Yes, of course there’s the matter of funding. There’s always the matter of funding. Yet such is the teacher retention crisis that something has to be done. In larger FE colleges, an admin team could be a pool for all departments with funding being shared by those using it.

It would also be cost-effective if it lessens teacher absence. If there’s more admin support for teachers, teachers have less of a workload. Less of a workload could lead to less stress. Less stress could lead to less sickness and absence, meaning less money being paid out for cover teachers.

Teachers would be able to concentrate on their students and their needs, which could lead to more engaged and motivated students. Which could lead to better results. Which could lead to a better reputation for the college. It’s ticking all the boxes.

And imagine this - it would contribute to the wellbeing of the teachers. Which could lead to happier teachers. Imagine. Happier teachers. Just imagine!

Paula McGregor is an English teacher and freelance writer. She tweets @paula_luce