More men are killed by overwork than the importance of the world justifies.
Rudyard Kipling
There’s a lot wrong with the way schools are held to account which result in perverse incentives for school leaders to treat teachers less well than we might want. There are also huge fears about a recruitment and retention crisis in education: Teachers seem to be leaving the profession in droves and new cannon-fodder is failing to step up to the plate in sufficient numbers.
Teachers feel overworked and under-appreciated. The two reasons most often cited for leaving the profession are unnecessary workload and poor behaviour management systems. Clearly, if schools want to retain teachers they need to tackle this double-headed hydra.
Suggestions abound for dealing with school discipline, but this approach, I think, offers the most sensible balance. More difficult is the question of how we address “unnecessary workload” as austerity bites. If only it were as simple as saying: STOP DOING POINTLESS THINGS! Part of the difficulty in managing teachers’ workload is stopping teachers doing ‘good things’ so they can focus on doing better things: a lot of the planning, marking and recording of data undertaken in some schools must seem necessary to someone. But what impact does it actually have on students? Would they perhaps be better served by having happy, healthy teachers? As I’ve said many times before, the job of school leaders is to strip out every demand on teachers except that they plan, teach and assess to the very best of their ability.
If ever you want to know how many teachers feel about their chosen career, have a read of the comment thread on this post. Here’s the latest in a long line of woe:
I am a Headteacher and I feel guilty that my son followed me into the trade. He spent four years at University training to be a Primary Teacher and completed it with a First. He was successful in applying for his first post and within three months is questioning his decision to become a teacher. He has been used to cover absent staff which means that not only does he lose his NQT time he often doesn’t get lunch, he is not given proper mentoring and takes heaps of work home because he isn’t given his PPA time at school, he even buys his own resources because the school has had to pay for translation services for the large influx of migrant pupils and is in financial deficit. This weekend he worked out how many hours a week he actually works which when compared to his wage equates to less than minimum wage. When he said, ” Dad I spent four years at Uni, am in my fifth training year as an NQT, I accrued £30,000 worth of student loan debt to get through that training and I earn less than a checkout person at a supermarket and have lost my social life due to the work I do at home, it doesn’t make sense” and I felt a wave of guilt that many years ago I said, “You would make a great teacher son.”
It seems to me that protecting teachers against unnecessary workload will end up saving schools the cost of continually needing to replace teachers burnt out by the treadmill of the expectation that to be even a moderately accomplished teacher you need to sacrifice every evening and weekend on the altar of professionalism.
Here’s a two-step policy suggestion which might just help tackle the problems of both accountability and retention:
- Make it a statutory requirement for schools to conduct an exit interview with every outgoing member of staff. Maybe you’re sceptical of school leaders’ ability to conduct these interviews impartially? Maybe they could be completed remotely and stored on DfE servers? These files would then be held on record for, say, five years.
- Include staff turnover as part of Ofsted’s Leadership & Management judgement. If the data suggests there’s an unusual exodus from a particular school, inspectors can sift through the exit interviews to see if any signal can be found in the disgruntled noise.
I can imagine scenarios where the unscrupulous might try to game such a system and so to protect both schools and teachers we would probably need a statutory, standardised form that would be stored remotely as a read only file.
I realise it’s a long shot, but it might just work.
Prevention better than cure? Exit interviews would be a good source of evidence, but by then the damage is done.
Leaders at all levels should be asking: ‘Would I support this policy if I was being directed to follow it?’, and ‘Does my bias look big in this?’
The requirement for exit interviews might be the beginnings of a cure. If you *know* you will be held to account for staff turnover then you will be forced to behave differently.
I and several others left a school a few years ago due to the headteachers unreasonable demands on her staff. This continues year on year, when OFSTED visited the school they praised the head for coping so well when she had such a high turnover of staff!
The problem being no one could say anything as she held all the cards with regards to a reference. If the exit interview had been in place maybe things could have been better for the staff. Accountability for the head was non existent.
I agree staff turnover should be part of ofsted’s consideration, and looking at patterns within that eg number of middle leaders, nqts, TAs, and women returning from maternity.
There would need to be more confidence that what is said in an exit interview will not influence any future reference requests. And whilst I know it shouldn’t, we all know it does sometimes, not by saying negative things but by leaving out the most positive details. If that could be guaranteed, then great idea.
Fundamentally though, it would be better for leaders to want to create an environment with happy staff because they value them, not because they’re fearful of what might be said in exit interviews. But in the meantime, that accountability might help.
Great teaching is the core of any school and that needs appropriate planning which takes time. We have all spent an hour properly planning a piece of work that thakes the pupils less than half that time! Too many SLTs seem to think that lesson proformas and meeting containing “useful” training will improve teaching while what we need is time.
I’d advise against exit interviews: you are talking to the same people who will write your references and you never know, you may need a job in that school again one day………
Agreed on staff turnover data. It would be so simple to implement. However, if education if child-centred (it is in primary), then only the children matter and everything and everyone else comes second to that. Many Ofsted inspectors, SLT and indeed teachers might think that high turnover is a good thing because it represents a never-ending ‘quest’ to get the ‘best’ kind of teachers for the children; everyone else who left was clearly shit.
As I said in the post, “Maybe you’re sceptical of school leaders’ ability to conduct these interviews impartially? Maybe they could be completed remotely and stored on DfE servers? These files would then be held on record for, say, five years.” Would that help mitigate the reference problem?
yes I reckon so!
You’ve stolen my idea! 😉
I left my first school along with twenty others, almost all due to the same reason. Did the school improve? Not according to results, Ofsted or those still teaching there. At least the leaving speeches were short.
I like this a lot. I came up with something similar recently which I don’t think I ever wrote up: an annual survey of staff including wellbeing measures – the results of which would be published externally. Teachers could therefore compare which schools looked after them best; Ofsted and parents could do likewise.
Sounds like a worthwhile idea.
Interesting article, well put. Though if full time class Teaching defined as: planning, reporting, assessment, marking and the delivery of, is thought of as too much – then what of those with responsibilities in addition to this? To name a few of my additional responsibilities: Phase Leading, Assessment and Curriculum Lead and development, English Lead (with associated INSET responsibility) SLT, Teacher Governorship and an NPQSL course, Year 6 full time teaching. No extra time given to fulfil these things beyond an afternoon of PPA. THIS, is also defined under Teaching. In all this, what is the ‘better’ thing? What is my priority, with pressure is on all aspects?
Further, when and if I do state that I am feeling swamped I am asked what would I like taken off me – with the very strong implication being that I am a ‘failed’ leader/teacher/human.
Surely there must be a better system than this? Where is life meant to fit in? Teaching workload is not ‘just’ the former… It is all of the above and so, so much more!
I think it’s a deeper-seated cultural thing. While schools feel they are entitled to ask their staff to do anything without the need for a balancing action, nothing will change. Even ‘important’ things like marking have been inflated until they are unmanageable, so it’s not just the marginal stuff.
And we need to get rid of the emotional blackmail that (intentionally or otherwise) accompanies notions of ‘professionalism’. It is deeply insidious.
You’ve nailed it there. Emotional blackmail is at the core of so many demands on teachers. “It’s for the children’s benefit, don’t you believe in high standards etc etc”. Lived through similar situation recently where whole teaching staff’s abilities were impugned in a mass email and the result was mass resignations.
Completely agree
It’s Economics. There is not the resource to do everything so the professional has to make a judgement about what is the most effective use of the time allowed. Opportuniy cost menas that for everything you do there will be at least one other that you can’t. Too many schools try to turn all the amps up to 11 when leadership is about getting the mix right and recognising that you can’t do everything.
Fantastic idea
I’ve suggested it myself
My partner has also suggested it.
True people may not be totally honest in exit interview
Either going overboard or holding back for fear of future references.
In any case the turnover itself is still a very useful statistic
I’d go further and suggest that staff should be able to complain anonymously about management. They are thick skinned and paid enough. Yes some comments would be exaggerated but a higher than usual number would trigger some sort of investigation into bullying behaviour for example. One recent problem is that Wilshaw said we need more maverick heads. Some individuals clearly misinterpreted this.
“Include staff turnover as part of Ofsted’s Leadership & Management judgement”. Yes to this. How can they have overlooked the fact that we lost 13 members of staff in one term?
Cos they weren’t looking :/
Excellent stuff, David.
Exit interviews do happen in some schools – my OH was a school governor for a while, and she instituted Exit Interviews with staff who were leaving the school.
The interviews were done by a member of the school’s Governing Body.
She says that all involved found the process invaluable. Governors asked about resources, processes and so on, and got a good insight into the school culture.
Her view was that it was one of the the most effective ways to get open and honest opinions about the school from those who worked there (with the usual caveats that those leaving were not necessarily representative of those who were not leaving).
In my experience, whatever is said, if not a popular view in terms of leadership, the voice of the Head and/or leadership outweigh the voice of the teacher. It’s exactly that type of poor leadership and governance that lead to schools where people want to leave.
Governors listen to the Head and leadership. They will cover their own backs.
I like your suggested system. Maybe one disgruntled teacher is an anomaly, many should cause serious concern.
Have worked to make these types of suggestions practical.
Check it out here http://www.ptolemyuk.com
Be warned it is a commercial link, small company with ex teachers tho!
Only posted as it seemed so ‘on topic’.
I always find it amazing that, whatever the recruitment picture nationally, the best heads have a knack of attracting and keeping good teachers. The future has got to be more about the teacher and less about the head. As a parent, I’m much more interested in who will actually be teaching my daughter than who the head is. The head’s job is to protect, nurture and release the teacher’s talent. If they don’t do that, they are failing in their role. Let’s publish a list of heads who teachers love working for – and compare it to the schools’ outcomes. Will there be a strong correlation between the two?….hmmm
[…] What would you do tomorrow if you were Secretary of State? DD: Here’s a policy idea I’d try to put in place: www.learningspy.co.uk/leadership/8534/ […]
If a school is doing it right staff should only leave if personal circumstances dictate a change or if staff are moving on for a new challenge (I won’t say promotion as that is not what we all want) I like to be challenged, but I like to be supported too. Staff should not be leaving to get away from the school/slt/ head/culture/behaviour or work load.