Workload

WORKLOAD

THINGS WON’T GET BETTER UNTIL WE TAKE NATIONAL ACTION

Louise Cuffaro (Newham NUT)

The high prioritisation of the workload resolution (in 2006 and again in 2007) reflects the strength of ordinary teachers' feelings that the NUT must urgently and more effectively address this issue.

Excessive requirements for short-term planning, endless meetings and the like are just the tip of the iceberg as far as members in my school are concerned.

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Highest on the list of hates remains SATs and all its associated initiatives.

ike many school NUT groups, we held a union meeting to discuss the Union’s new workload guidelines and how to implement them. Teachers expressed their growing concern over the numbers of initiatives that have come down to schools over the last few years, increasing our workload and levels of stress.

Highest on the list of hates remains SATs and all its associated initiatives.

There’s the grind of planning, endless revision of maths, literacy and science (largely unrelieved by educational trips, music, art, PE etc until after the actual tests). On top of this is the endless marking and levelling of every piece of maths, science and literacy. Add to this the pressure on our year 6 teachers and
relevant post holders (now with TLRs) to run breakfast, lunchtime or after school
booster classes-and the subsequent increases in planning, marking and
teaching time.

Last but not least, is the amount of time consumed, and the high levels of stress experienced by teachers dealing (often daily) with the behavioural fallout, which is the high price many of the current generation of children are suffering due to SATs.

Most members also expressed frustration at the increased stress and workload surrounding the increased use of technology. We all now have to use the
interactive whiteboards that have been installed. As with all ICT, it's great when it works and you have been fully trained, (which for many of us was inadequate as it amounted to a twilight session at inset) so that you can feel confident and competent. But it messes up your plans and your nerves
when it fails!

More recent initiatives have flowed from the much-publicised government plans to introduce the compulsory teaching of foreign language in Primary schools in the near future.

This term, in the Primary School where I teach, we were told that we need to have a "Language of the Week". Staff managed to get this changed to a Language of the Half Term! We are told the language and then we are expected to look up basic vocabulary and pronunciation on the Internet e.g. counting 1-10, yes, no, hello, goodbye, please, thank you etc. and to incorporate opportunities and activities to use the language throughout the school day and across the curriculum. As with all new initiatives there was inadequate training given (a Monday night inset) and no extra time to plan or prepare resources.

In our inner city, multicultural school we have always used opportunities to share and promote the languages that our pupils speak. This initiative however, takes away our professional judgement and skills on when, how and which languages (based on pupils' languages which may vary from class to class) to share and experience. Instead it has become another stick to beat us with, added to the long list of things management monitor in our planning and practice.

Numerous other NUT groups must have had similar meetings discussing the particular pressures facing their staff. But why haven’t many schools then requested a strike ballot?

It certainly isn’t because teachers aren’t snowed under with workload. Even the Government’s own surveys show that, despite the promises, there have been “no statistically significant changes” in teachers’ working hours.

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Many delegates will already understand what’s missing from our campaign - and that’s the national strike action that is already Conference policy.

suspect that, like at my school, part of the problem is that the workload pressures often don’t translate easily into the specific headings in the Union guidelines. But the main problem is surely that the Union’s strategy places all the responsibility on individual school groups to pursue a dispute with their own Head and Governors.

Fighting in your school alone is no easy matter. Yes, where members stood firm over TLRs, some significant victories were achieved. But for every school that scored a victory, there were many others where teachers weren’t confident to go for a ballot.

Trying to use the guidelines school by school in itself engenders workload and
stress for reps and members. It may require standing up to a bullying management team. Even where the Head is more reasonable, schools are under such pressure that boosting pupil results and taking on the latest initiative will take priority over maintaining teachers’ ‘work-life balance’.

Many of the fundamental problems like class size, a shortage of administration staff to take on the ‘21 tasks’, and the absence of meaningful ‘leadership and management time’ can only be solved by securing extra funding in any case. That can’t be won just by local action.

That’s why teachers recognise that teacher workload can’t just be solved at school level – it needs a national approach as well.

Annual Conference will have little time to debate these critical issues in any detail. That’s why the main Conference motion on workload is right to call for a meeting of Divisional Secretaries to discuss how the new workload campaign is going so far.

But I think many delegates will already understand what’s missing from our campaign - and that’s the national strike action that is already Conference policy.

The Union’s “Taking the Campaign Forward” Guide for Associations and Divisions rightly reminded us all that “Conference 2006 reaffirmed the … decision of the 2005 Conference to … ballot members on the introduction of new toughened workload guidelines … and, further, to develop a campaign of nationally co-ordinated industrial action to secure the funding needed to meet our demands, including announcing plans for a national strike and putting in all the preparations necessary to win the ballot ”.

What’s changed since 2005 and 2006? Workload certainly hasn’t got better. Teachers are still being driven out by stress and ill-health. So why has the Executive only carried out half of the Union policy? – ignoring the half that puts the responsibility on the national union to give a lead!

School reps and local officers are being ground down by the pressures of trying to keep up with the individual cases created by the intolerable stress and workload teachers face. It’s time we tackled the cause, not the symptom and took the national action proposed by St.Helens & Lewisham (37.1).

National action will send a message that enough is enough and give confidence to and strength to NUT members to pursue further action in their schools as well.