What are some practical suggestions?
There has been a lot written in the last year or two about wellbeing and supporting staff workload in education to avoid ‘burnout’. It’s something that I’ve been thinking about quite a lot, particularly in the last week or two as I look to evaluate and streamline our existing systems and explore avenues for potential improvement. Last week, I put a thread together summarising some of my key views and suggestions, much of it isn’t revolutionary and is currently being used within school systems around the country but this blog will attempt to summarise my opinions relating to this topic, while offering suggestions for practical application in school and questions for leaders to consider. Twitter threads after all can disappear and be lost!
Even though they are cyclical, there is a nuanced tension between wellbeing and workload and the definitions related to both. In a recent meeting with school leaders, I attempted to illustrate the differences between the terms. To me, improving wellbeing has often been represented by tokenistic ‘wellbeing days’ and ‘events’ which may improve and increase staff morale in the short-term but has a rather limited impact on long-term foundational growth. Within my evaluation, I have been distinctly thinking about improving and streamlining staff workload, which, in turn, will impact wellbeing in school. They are interlinked. Wellbeing needs to be the fabric and culture of the school. Although wellbeing is individualistic to each teacher, by offering clarity and removing the ‘fluff’ and unnecessary ventures into our school systems, I believe this will help to ward off future burnout and ensure teachers can do what they do best and what we generally enter the profession for… teaching. Are we allowing our teachers to teach to the best of their ability?
There are some key words attached to improving wellbeing and limiting workload stressors. These include approach, time, reduction, access, work-life balance, trust, culture and communication. Due to my position in my school, I have broken down these suggestions into two sections – ‘Teaching and Learning‘ and ‘Whole School systems‘.
Teaching and Learning
Ensuring more time for departmental and collaborative planning and CPD
For me, an effective CPD programme should prioritise departmental CPD as a source for staff collaboration, curriculum discussions and subject specific CPD. Within a generalised six week half termly block, we ensure that at least two CPD slots are given over to departments. Alongside this, on INSET days further time is set aside for department use. Although it is important that school direction and priorities may ‘come from the top’, it is important that departments are given time to discuss and explore their passion for the subject further and that CPD is specific to departments and not generalised across the whole school with limited impact. Empowering middle leaders is vital here.
Centralising resources
To aid workload and to help ensure staff are not working late at night planning individual pieces of work, we encourage and promote collaborative planning and centralising resources for all to access. Departments have free choice here in how this works best within their area. If a resource has already been made, why should staff be asked to plan on their own and ‘reinvent the wheel’? Is it more effective for a staff member to take ownership of a particular unit of work as opposed to different lessons across a number of different year groups?
Optional CPD pathways and the element of choice
This is something we are constantly adapting within our future planning but, alongside any internal CPD that staff are part of, ensuring there are a number of different optional pathways within programmes. This may be a Teaching and Learning Council, the Middle Leaders programme or different working groups for staff to access and use to develop and progress. Ensure an element of choice for what may suit staff and departmental needs. Within this, are you empowering staff members to drive and lead CPD sessions?
Pre-recorded meetings online with takeaway documents
Time is vitally important to consider for improving wellbeing and workload. Where can we allow staff to have more time? With the recent periods of remote learning, is there a need for certain meetings to now occur face to face? Could a briefing or meeting be recorded and staff allowed freedom to watch it when best for them? Alongside this, could meeting notes or simple takeaway documents be shared with staff as well? What will make it easier for them to understand the meeting and the discussion or action points? How frequent are meetings as a whole? What should a takeaway document look like?
Feedback not marking
A lot of schools have started to move away from formal written marking and have removed this requirement from their policy. We are starting to move towards whole class feedback and really teaching and communicating the importance of prioritising feedback over marking, but also ensuring department specific approaches within this. If your school has an existing marking policy that can’t realistically be achieved or quality assured, why is it needed or why does it exist? Why might it be onerous and add to staff burden? How do we change mindsets to ensure staff do not feel they must complete lots of work outside of school? It’s vital here to ensure the rationale is explained to all stakeholders and the nature of feedback and its effect size understood by all.
Pedagogical Principles to outline ‘excellence’ but not prescriptive or a checklist
I strongly believe that autonomy and frameworks liberate. By going in ‘blind’ to something, this can increase anxiety and stress. If a framework already exists and is understood and created by the staff body, this not only aids buy-in, but also gives staff a framework of excellence to fall back on. Alongside this, a framework of ‘excellent’ teaching Pedagogical Principles helps staff to identify areas of strength and development within their own practice. However, it’s vital that a set of principles across the school are not prescriptive or delivered as a checklist. What whole school structures exist? How are you ensuring continuity across different classrooms in school? This, in turn, will aid routines.
Strict CPD timings
I think it’s important that we are clear to staff about how long a CPD session will last for and not going beyond this. Staff may have already planned something else and it also allows time for personal reflection. @LouisEverett1 in his work has said that by planning a CPD session and communicating a finish point that is longer than anticipated, it helps enable a small victory when the session ends before the published finish time. Be realistic and clear with how long a session needs to last for. Does it really need to be an hour? Where will it occur? What will staff actually be doing in the session?
Summaries. Summaries. Summaries.
In our quest to be ‘research-driven’ as a community, asking staff to read pages and pages of research articles is not realistic and will not be met well. Give this option but I strongly believe in the power of summarising information. As a rule to myself, I never share anything with staff that goes beyond a single page of A4 or two PowerPoint slides. @MrsPearce has written and shared her brilliant research summaries linked to this.
Less onerous performance management systems
What is expected of staff? What is your appraisal system linked to? How is this communicated to staff? We are moving towards a Professional Growth model and ensuring consistency with staff language across not only performance management but all systems.
Whole School systems
Centralised school detentions
Removing the different layers of detentions that have existed from teacher-led to department-led to faculty-led to school-led. Often these layers are misunderstood and pupils can fall between the cracks and are not held accountable for any consequences given. Remove these layers to aid teacher and middle leader workload. It’s something else that can be removed and the time and effort traditionally staff would have to exert on this and chasing pupils, can be used for something else.
Online Parents’ Evenings
The general feedback from schools on EduTwitter who have used SchoolCloud or other online providers this year has seemed to be overwhelmingly positive. We have used School Cloud this year. By using this online function, staff can deliver Parents’ Evening from the comfort of their own home and also, the onerous process of collecting student times has been removed which can waste minutes within a lesson. It also ensures that staff have more free time during the evening within appointments and can book in individual breaks that suits their needs.
Early communication of any changes
Early communication helps to ease anxiety and stress. Staff are aware and can plan for future changes as these are not ‘thrown’ upon them at the last minute with no room for consultation. Alongside this, ensuring long documents or information needing actioning are not sent out on a Friday with a short deadline. If you are asking staff to do something, how much time needs to be given to ensure the task is completed well and has the greatest possible impact on outcomes?
Feedback mechanisms and surveys
Using staff surveys, ensuring doors are open and leaders are accessible and visual during a school day to help gain feedback about different practices. This year we have been using a CPD ‘Expert Panel’ style event where staff members present for five minutes on a particular topic. The topics of these events have been decided based upon staff surveys identifying what they would like to develop and need more information on. This is also driven by teachers.
Prioritising the staff community
Allowing staff time and opportunities for social contact. This has been difficult within the period of remote learning but what events or social activities do you have to instil a sense of cohesion and collective culture? Is this ad hoc or a built in programme published in advance? Is this across the whole school or departmental? Who is this led by? Could this be a virtual online staff room? How can staff talk to each other and get to know each other across the whole school to support enjoyment at work? Are there networking opportunities?
Rethinking emails and all staff email communication
What is the school’s position on emails? What needs to be communicated to the whole staff body? We are streamlining our communication to staff via emails using bulletins, briefings and collating information together to move away from lots of emails being sent out on a particular day. What is your position on emails at the weekend? I think an acceptance that some staff members want to read their emails on a Sunday afternoon to feel prepared for Monday morning is also important here.
Celebrate great practice
There is some amazing work being done by staff members in the ‘dark’ out there which feeds into the wider school culture. How are you seeking out, promoting and sharing this best practice? Some mechanisms here include CPD pathways, ensuring there is a variety of staff presenting within CPD, newsletters and bulletins, a culture of praise, informal discussions and a system for reporting best practice to leaders. Sometimes simply being thanked and told you are doing a good job is a morale boost that is much needed.
Smart data requirements
How many data captures are realistically needed? When are staff asked to complete this? Is time set aside? Are any data drops planned cleverly or grouped together? I think it’s vitally important that this is factored into planning, how can data be streamlined or even simplified to aid staff workload and further understanding.
The nature of whole school briefings
There is sometimes a danger that a staff briefing early in the week can be simply a communication of key notices that have already been published via a bulletin. It can also sometimes descend into a chaotic ‘shouting’ match for staff to get notices out there before the bell goes. There is a role that briefings can play within training structures and it can also be used to communicate key weekly priorities and further outline the shared staff language. If a bulletin of notices has been released, why can’t the briefing be a small staff meeting outlining best practice and sharing an effective teaching and learning strategy?
Buddy-up system
A further idea is for schools to set up an informal buddy system whereby staff members, in their pairs, work together to support each other across the year. This can also include the sharing of gifts!
Mr. Gordon Teaches 