With increased pressures facing the independent sector in turn placing more demands on teachers, Acting Head and Deputy Head (Academic) at Wrekin College, Shropshire, Ben Smith, puts forward some strategies to aid managing workloads that can help create a better work-life balance.
Never has the workload crisis facing the teaching profession been more acute. Research undertaken by the Department for Education last year reported that over half of classroom teachers routinely work in excess of 50 hours a week, while a quarter devote over 60 hours to their roles. The correlation between these working patterns and stress, anxiety and other mental health issues among teachers is well-documented with one major teaching union reporting that over 80% of its members believed that their job had adversely affected their mental wellbeing. The increased costs faced by independent schools since January have made them particularly susceptible to criticism in relation to teacher workload as all resources (human and otherwise) are inevitably stretched in a challenging financial climate. Daniel Kebede, the General Secretary of the National Education Union, has attributed the increasing, often ‘excessive’ workload of independent school teachers to ‘cost-cutting measures’ introduced in response to the increased cost of VAT and National Insurance. There is little doubt that independent schools are under more financial pressure than ever with one in five independent school teachers witnessing redundancies at their schools in the last 12 months. If we accept that current constraints are unlikely to be relaxed in the short to medium-term and that the substantial demands made of teachers as a result of these pressures will continue, perhaps the salient question is what can the teacher at the chalkface actually do to mitigate a frequently overwhelming workload? What strategies can they adopt both to reduce their ‘excessive’ working hours and refocus their energies on the delivery of impactful teaching that facilitates pupil progress? Here I attempt to set out four approaches designed to create a healthier work-life balance for teachers. What I offer is far from a panacea, but rather a series of working habits teachers can cultivate in order to function more efficiently and to carve out at least some semblance of a life beyond the classroom.