Less than two in five school staff say they feel confident performing their role, according to a new survey that suggests this figure has plummeted during the pandemic. 

New figures published today by Tes show 38 per cent of school staff in the UK say they feel confident in their role, compared with 79 per cent reported last year when a similar survey was published. 

The new Tes Wellbeing Report 2022 also reveals that 67 per cent of teachers in the UK agree that their workload is unmanageable.

This is three times higher than when staff were asked the same question just over a year ago.

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The new report says teachers being required to teach online, often for the first time, and having to create teacher-assessed grades after exams were cancelled could be factors that have led to a drop in confidence among the school workforce. 

Tes carried out a similar survey in late 2020 and found active participation - involving staff in planning decisions and giving them a sense of control - was shown to influence confidence and pointed towards effective coaching and goal attainment to increase staff self-confidence.

Poor communication in the workplace was also identified as a factor leading to low confidence, whereby unmotivated staff may begin to question their own abilities.

Key findings in today’s Tes Wellbeing Report 2022 include:

• Self-belief among school staff has taken a major blow, with now only 38 per cent of UK respondents saying they feel confident performing their role, compared with 79 per cent in the 2020 survey.
• 67 per cent of UK teachers said their workload is not manageable - much higher than the international average of 36 per cent across the survey.
• Almost half of school staff said they feel they don’t have a voice about how things go at their school.
• A similar number said they feel they don’t have the autonomy to make decisions. This is particularly true for teaching staff: 57 per cent of teachers and 41 per cent of middle leaders said they lack autonomy.
• 47 per cent of UK respondents said there aren’t opportunities for them to develop in their current position, with only a fifth (22 per cent) feeling that there is.
• School staff are enjoying their work less. More than half of those surveyed said they do not find work fun, with less than a fifth saying that they do (down from 45 per cent last year).
• While 81 per cent of UK respondents said that they get a sense of belonging to a team in their current roles, only two-fifths of those surveyed said they feel that their colleagues care about them. This is a substantial drop year-on-year; in 2020, the majority of respondents (66 per cent) said they felt their colleagues cared about them.

Sinéad McBrearty, chief executive of Education Support, a charity that supports the mental health and wellbeing of staff in schools, said the report “sheds light on the severe impact of the pandemic on the teaching profession”. 

“Teachers and other school staff are struggling with heavy and intense workloads,” she said. “They are struggling with work-life balance and often don’t receive enough of the right support”. 

Ms McBrearty has called for wellbeing to be “at the heart” of the country’s education recovery plan.

She added: “Proper recognition of the importance of teacher mental health is essential to support the people who are responsible for teaching and inspiring our children.”

Recent research from the Education Support charity has found that more than three in four school staff have experienced symptoms of poor mental health linked to their work in the past year.

Katie Shearer, a principal teacher at St Patrick’s Primary School in Glasgow, was featured in the Tes Wellbeing Report 2022.

She said: “The vocational commitment of teachers should not then be used as a vehicle to overwork, guilt trip or compromise teacher mental health. 

“Our commitment to the profession at times can leave us feeling very self-critical, under pressure and trying to manage an overwhelming amount of stress. If practitioners want to be able to make a real difference, our health and wellbeing must be a priority, now more than ever.”

The Tes Wellbeing Report 2022 includes data compiled from 4,379 global responses and 2,995 UK responses.