Supporting early career teachers: Reducing teacher workload
Supporting early career teachers: reducing teacher workload
Materials to help school leaders and staff support teachers in the early stages of their career, to help reduce workload.
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We’ve prepared this advice to help school leaders, and other staff, support teachers in the early stages of their teaching careers.
Read the case studies and examples below to see what other schools are doing to support their teachers.
We have also published advice, ‘Addressing workload in initial teacher education’, to support ITE providers to take action to reduce the workload of trainee teachers and their partnership schools.
Our 3-stage guide to ‘Reducing workload in your school’ explains how to use the workload toolkit.
These materials are part of stage 2. Stage 1 contains tools to help you carry out a workload audit, and stage 3 contains tools to help you evaluate the changes you’ve made after a workload review.
What works in schools
- The Bridges Federation provides support for early career teachersto help them manage their workload and develop their practice (a federation in Southwark made up of 3 primary schools with between 225 to 320 pupils each)
- The Co-op Academy set up a group to discuss workload and share ideas to reduce it (secondary school in Leeds with approximately 920 pupils)
- Durrington High School looked at the small changes they could make so that staff could focus on their core purpose (secondary school in West Sussex with approximately 1660 pupils)
- The Holy Trinity Church of England Academy has created a culture where teachers never feel their workload is overwhelming (primary academy in Wiltshire with approximately 150 pupils)
- Prince Henry’s Grammar School reduced workload by focusing on quality and asking: do I really need to do this? (secondary school in West Yorkshire with approximately 1490 pupils)
- Huntington School looked at 5 areas for teachers to teach good lessons without adding to their workload(secondary school in York with approximately 1470 pupils)
Acknowledgements
The department would like to thank Michael Green from the University of Greenwich for his work on developing this advice, and to the schools and initial teacher education providers who have contributed to its development. We would also like to thank all those who have contributed their time to share their practical examples and case studies linked from this page.
Last updated 15 March 2019 – hide all updates
- Revised advice, reflecting the latest research, to support workload reduction for teachers in the early stages of their career. Updated the list of what works in schools links on the page.
- First published.
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