The Department for Education has today said it will reinstate a revised list of administrative tasks that teachers should not have to do, as part of its pledge to reduce teacher and leader workload.
The list of 23 tasks - published today as part of the initial recommendations made by the Workload Reduction Taskforce - is a draft proposed list that will be inserted into the School Teachers’ Pay and Conditions Document (STPCD).
The DfE today accepted most of the initial recommendations from the taskforce, including scrapping the controversial requirement for schools to operate performance-related pay (PRP) progression amid concerns about the workload burden it creates for teachers and school leaders.
The move comes after the taskforce was commissioned to look at how to cut five hours from teachers’ working week, with final recommendations to be made to the government in March.
The updated list of tasks - which includes photocopying, “producing and collating analyses of attendance figures” and “investigating a pupil’s absence” - is set to be reinserted into the STPCD 10 years after Michael Gove, as education secretary at the time, made the decision to scrap an earlier version.
Tes asked the DfE which school staff would be required to carry out the tasks on the new list if teachers could not be asked to do them, but it had not responded at the time of writing.
Regarding the task of investigating pupil absence, last week both the government and Labour set out plans to tackle the ongoing attendance crisis.
Teacher workload list ‘a challenge’ for schools
There are concerns that some schools may face a “resource challenge” in fulfilling the expectations set out in the proposed list of tasks.
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “The list of admin tasks that teachers shouldn’t have to do doesn’t mean those tasks don’t need doing.
“One of the points we will make to the department is if a school hasn’t got the resource to ensure teachers don’t have to do these tasks, then they will need to have the funding to employ people to do these.”
It is worth noting that an academy trust is not bound by the STPCD, and can set its own terms and conditions, although most academies do follow the document, in the same way that they follow the national pay scale.
Once the STPCD is updated to include the list, the list will apply to all those employed under its terms.
Steve Rollett, deputy chief executive of the Confederation of School Trusts, said he thinks the recommendations will provide a “useful reference point” to help trusts find ways of reducing workload.
However, he said that it was clear “there is more to do across the system”.
