Department For Education
How to use the toolkit
The resources in this toolkit have been produced by school leaders, teachers and other sector experts in conjunction with the Department for Education (DfE), and have been tested with a range of schools across England.
You can use these resources to:
- identify workload issues in your school
- address workload issues in your school (such as feedback and marking)
- evaluate the impact of workload reduction measures
You can adapt these resources to fit your school context. They can help you start to reduce workload, or can complement what youre already doing to reduce workload. They were designed for schools, but can also be used in colleges and other settings.
Some of the resources explain how schools have developed and maintained a culture of openness and trust which has removed traditional monitoring approaches such as classroom observations. You can use other resources as they are, perhaps as a basis for a training session, while the example policies can be adapted for your own context.
We recommend that you undertake a review of workload in your school as a starting point. The zip folder identify workload issues in your school contains a simple-to-use survey to stimulate discussion, which can be included in your school improvement cycle.
You may wish to conduct a regular review, involving all staff. This will help you to identify the areas you need to prioritise. Schools which took part in a fully evaluated project using the toolkit made significant improvements in workload and wellbeing after focussing? on the issues they identified in their survey. In many cases, pupil outcomes also improved.
In the Wellbeing and workload folder you will find example wellbeing policies. These can be read alongside the Education staff wellbeing charter, which is a?declaration of support and set of commitments to the wellbeing and mental health of everyone working in education.
You can find more information about how schools and colleges can sign up to the charter.
If you are a school leader, you can use this toolkit with teachers and staff in their directed time, for example:
- as part of their INSET
- in a staff or leadership team meeting
- in a network session with other schools
- as part of school improvement planning
Identify workload issues in your school
You can start by identifying whats causing the biggest workload issues, so you know what to prioritise. You may wish to conduct a regular review, involving all staff, to work alongside your school improvement review cycle.
For resources to help identify your school workload issues, download the zip file which contains:
- an example of a staff workload survey
- a practical tool using software to conduct a workload survey (includes a link to an online survey you can duplicate to use in your school)
- a workshop presentation for staff to discuss the survey findings
- a structured conversation template
- an impact graph template
- a workshop presentation how to use an impact graph to identify workload issues
- a practical example using an?INSET?day to focus on what gets in the way of teaching
You can run a workshop as a whole school activity or in teams to discuss your survey outcomes and actions.
Choose the resources you wish to use and adapt them for your school context. The folder contains options of tools to use so you dont have to use them all.
Wellbeing and workload
For resources to help with wellbeing and workload, download the zip file which contains examples of:
- establishing a school wellbeing committee
- a workload and wellbeing action plan
- how to establish a school workload group
- a programme of work to tackle workload and improve wellbeing
- a whole school approach to wellbeing
- an academy trust workload agreement
- 2 examples of staff wellbeing policies
- an example staff wellbeing statement
You can choose the resources that you wish to use and adapt them for your school context.
Data management
For resources to help reduce data management workload, download the zip file which contains:
- a workshop presentation with facilitator notes
- a summary sheet to accompany the workshop
- an example of a data collection audit for use in the workshop
You can run the workshop as a whole school activity or in teams, and adapt the example for use in your school.
Feedback and marking
For resources to help reduce feedback and marking workload, download the zip file which contains:
- a workshop presentation with facilitator notes
- a summary sheet to accompany the workshop
- an example of an impact matrix to review and change current marking practice
- an impact graph template
- a workshop presentation how to use an impact graph to identify workload issues
- 4 examples of feedback policies in primary and secondary schools
- an example marking reflection exercise
You can run the workshop as a school activity or in teams, and adapt the examples for use in your school.