New research shows how reducing teacher workload can maintain or even improve pupil outcomes as well as boosting teacher wellbeing.

The research, published today by the Department for Education, was carried out by the  Education Development Trust charity, and looked at teacher time spent on marking and feedback, lesson planning, monitoring, data reporting and communication policies.

Teachers giving individual feedback in the classroom, as opposed to traditional out-of-class written marking, was among time-saving measures that boosted pupil performance.

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Workload: At least 70% of teachers working over contracted hours

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The report states: “The strategies that involved direct individual feedback in the classroom as the children were learning were most likely to be associated with the largest effects [on reducing workload and improving pupil outcomes].

The benefits of reducing teacher workload

“This is perhaps not surprising as the real-time process of direct feedback, correction of misconceptions, setting of targets and selection of strategies in response to such feedback is likely to trigger processes associated with pupil metacognition (planning, monitoring, evaluation).”

Participating schools came from eight Teaching Schools Council regions in England. In the research, they were encouraged to use the DfE’s School Workload Reduction Toolkit as well as identifying priority areas for reducing workload and adopting new practices to address them.

Researchers found that workload reduction interventions reduced the average time that teachers spent on target tasks from around 1 hour and 20 minutes to 30 minutes (among 267 teachers in 14 schools).

Workload reduction approaches had an overall significant effect on teachers’ wellbeing in areas such a “workaholism” (used to measure the extent to which teachers were working too hard), optimism, self-efficacy, enthusiasm and love of learning.

The report states: “Headteachers and trust leads may find themselves cautious to remove or reduce processes which they believed to be important for maintaining or improving the school’s academic performance - such as detailed lesson planning, extensive written marking outside of class and frequent data reporting.”

However, it adds: “Across the studies overall, reducing teacher workload was associated with a period of maintained or improved pupil outcomes.”