More is being done to reduce teacher workload in England than in Scotland, a teaching union has told the Scottish Labour annual conference.
In a fringe event this afternoon, the NASUWT’s national official for Scotland, Mike Corbett, reiterated his union’s demands around teacher pay, addressing violent behaviour in schools and reducing workload.
On teacher workload, Mr Corbett looked to England and compared the action being taken there with what is happening in Scotland.
He said he had written to education secretary Jenny Gilruth last month to convey members’ “frustration” about lack of progress on the Scottish government’s policy of reducing teachers’ class-contact time by 90 minutes, and to ”highlight other things that could be done in the meantime”.
Teacher workload: tasks teachers shouldn’t do
He noted, for example, that “England seems to have been more proactive” in tackling teacher workload because “it has a Workload Reduction Taskforce, which has recently announced some recommendations to address workload pressures”.
This, said Mr Corbett, included “reinserting a list of bureaucratic tasks that teachers and leaders should not be expected to do into the school teachers’ pay and conditions document”.
This is a list of 23 tasks that teachers in England should not have to do - although critics have pointed out that it bears close resemblance to a previous list dating back to 2013, suggesting that little progress has been made since then.
Mr Corbett recalled that Scotland used to have an “equivalent list of clerical and administrative tasks” that was removed from the SNCT (Scottish Negotiating Committee for Teachers) Handbook; he suggested that this list could be “reinserted”.
Frustration over contact time policy
Mr Corbett also said that the “clear promise” in the 2021 SNP manifesto to reduce class-contact time by one and a half hours a week had been “warmly welcomed by teachers” because it would help to reduce workload by allowing “more time to undertake planning and marking, which, in turn, would lead to better lessons for pupils and improved feedback to them”.
He added: “The fact that we have begun 2024 without that promise being delivered and, worse, with the cabinet secretary confirming that it will not happen this year, is not only disappointing but extremely frustrating for NASUWT members.”
He said his union had highlighted to Ms Gilruth and her officials that Scotland had its own version of England’s Workload Reduction Taskforce around a decade ago: the Working Group on Tackling Bureaucracy, which published a report in 2015.
Mr Corbett added: “Most of the workload drivers that were highlighted there are still present today: forward planning, assessment, monitoring/reporting and improvement planning.
“Many of the suggestions made in those reports could still be effectively implemented, with a renewed focus from Scottish government and some pressure on - and oversight of - local authorities.”
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