Pathfinders Report

Pathfinders report

A Report of the National Union Of Teachers’ Pathfinder Schools Briefing held on Tuesday 25June 2002 at Hamilton House, London

INTRODUCTION AND WELCOME

Kathryn Stallard, NUT President, welcomed all Pathfinder head teachers and NUT school representatives to the meeting. She outlined the programme for the day and hoped that the event would enable delegates to consider a variety of issues concerning the implementation of solutions to decrease teachers’ workload.

DOUG McAVOY, NUT General Secretary

The General Secretary emphasised that the NUT supported the Pathfinder project as it took a unique approach to reducing teachers’ workload. He welcomed the underlying philosophy that changes need to be piloted with a sample group before being implemented nationwide.

He noted that the Government now understood that teachers’ workload had to be reduced if high standards of educational provision were to be maintained, as there was no doubt that the retention and recruitment of teachers impacted on the standard of education experienced by pupils.

He then cited the research on teacher shortages by Alan Smithers and Pamela Robinson in 2001 that had been commissioned by the NUT, which had found that, in order to insure a sufficient number of teachers, teaching needed to attract 10% of the total annual graduate output in addition to preventing teachers from leaving the profession at current levels. He noted that, ideally, the teaching profession should be able to draw the required number of graduates into teaching and that teachers should not be leaving the profession in such large numbers.

The General Secretary explained that the NUT would support the current work being done on remodelling if it lessened the burden on teachers. He then went on to outline the development of the concept of remodelling, beginning with the findings of the PricewaterhouseCooper’s Teacher Workload Study.

The Government had announced that it was committed to tackling teacher workload in order to enable teachers to focus on teaching. It had suggested that teacher workload could be tackled through a variety of means, including:

ICT support for teaching and management purposes;
Additional teaching assistants, bursarial staff and administrative support;
Training for support staff;
ICT training; and
Increased non-contact time for teachers for lesson planning, preparation, marking, recording (PPMR) and professional development.

The Secretary of State for Education, Estelle Morris, had acknowledged that teachers’ workload was excessive and had bid for more resources to provide additional classroom assistants and to employ more teachers in order to provide non-contact time. An announcement on how much would be available, as a result of the Comprehensive Spending Review, would be made shortly.

He suggested that, through remodelling, teacher workload would be addressed and that Pathfinder schools would contribute to a greater understanding of the issues that would affect the remodelling of the teaching profession. For example, some of the head teachers from the Pathfinder schools had told him that the initiative had provided them with the opportunity, for the first time, to feel comfortable not doing work that other institutions expected them to do and that they had felt obliged to do. He also questioned the demands made on headteachers and emphasised that ways of helping them to spend more time on the tasks that had to be done should be found.

The General Secretary considered the research commissioned by the NUT from John Atkins on teacher workload. He emphasised the Union’s long-standing commitment to a target working week for teachers of 35 hours, although teachers did not seem to be able to envisage this currently.

The ratio of teaching to preparation and marking time proposed by the teacher professional organisations was outlined. Currently, the ratio was 1:1, as 22-25 hours a week were spent on teaching and 22 hours on preparation on average. Teachers were working for more than 40 hours a week before activities such as meetings with colleagues and parents were taken into account. There was a need, therefore, to reduce the ratio in order to alleviate workload and to trial different ratios in Pathfinder schools. Although the Secretary of State had previously been unwilling to agree to this, the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) report on teacher workload had suggested that the ratio approach should be tested and the Union believed that the Pathfinder initiative provided an ideal opportunity to do so.

The General Secretary suggested that Pathfinder schools could reveal how enhanced staffing affected teaching and other ways of reducing teachers’ workload. They would also identify the extent to which teaching assistants could be used and what levels of skill were required. The NUT supported such experimentation regarding the use of support staff. It was essential that the project be implemented quickly so that any problems could be assessed and addressed. A full evaluation report of the initiative was also seen as vital to the process of disseminating lessons learnt from the project to other schools.

He re-affirmed that the issue of teacher workload was inextricably linked to teacher retention and recruitment and that it was in the best interests of all parties concerned that solutions were found, even if one of the solutions was dependent on the utilization of teaching assistants in different and untraditional ways. Within the national Remodelling Group, the NUT had worked with Unison to attempt to address issues such as the role of the teaching assistant, training and career paths.

There was an urgent need for defined roles for teaching assistants. The NUT had commissioned the University of Warwick to undertake research regarding teaching assistants. Its survey of NUT members in 13 LEAs had found that teachers valued teaching assistants and that they believed that they were beneficial in educational terms. However, teaching assistants were not found to reduce teachers’ workload and could actually increase it, as teachers were required to take responsibility for the management of teaching assistants, which also involved additional planning activities.

The survey had highlighted a number of issues concerning the professional relationship between teachers and teaching assistants which required further discussion, such as:

How could both the teacher and the teaching assistant be provided with the time necessary in order to undertake planning together?
At what point, if any, could a teaching assistant have control of a class?
Could teaching assistants teach a lesson prepared by a teacher?

A definition of the roles of the teacher and the teacher assistant was needed, as there was a blurring of responsibilities and roles currently. Unless an acceptable role for teaching assistants was agreed, teacher workload would not be resolved. Unless an acceptable role could be found for teaching assistants, excessive teacher workload would not be resolved. Teaching assistants were not a modern initiative and, in fact, the concept of teaching assistants had been put forward by the NUT in 1970 and, at the time, rejected by Government.

The General Secretary concluded by emphasizing that more teachers were needed to provide time to prepare, mark, plan and record during the school week. Workload could also be addressed by implementing changes in the ways teachers worked with teaching assistants. New positive solutions needed to be sought through the Pathfinders project. Excessive workload was damaging to the profession, therefore the Pathfinders project was to be welcomed. The General Secretary encouraged delegates to work positively with the project, as the outcome could potentially relieve all schools of excessive workload.

STEPHEN HILLIER – School Workforce Unit, Department for Education and Skills

Stephen Hillierintroduced his presentation by expressing the view that the establishment of the School Workforce Unit represented a change of mindset and focus within the DfES.

He said that he agreed with many of the points raised by Doug McAvoy in his introductory speech and believed that there was a strong element of ‘symbiosis’ between the view of the General Secretary and the Secretary of State for Education and Skills, Estelle Morris.

The Secretary of State had already declared a view that ‘delivering’ educational standards and tackling excessive workload were inextricably linked. At the root of this was a need to consider how resources were identified and used to ease workload pressures and raise standards.

David Milliband, the new Minister of State for School Standards, had observed that schools had received significant additional resources and improved staffing levels since 1997, under the new Labour Government. However, working practices in schools appeared to be such that these additional resources, including human resources, had not had sufficient impact on schools. It was necessary, therefore, to change practices in schools through ‘remodelling’ the workforce. The DfES had sought to facilitate such changes through collaboration and with the largest degree of consensus possible.

Some ‘key milestones’ had already been achieved in this process. These included:

the publication of the PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) surveyof teachers’ workload at the end of 2001. The survey had confirmed increased levels of teacher workload and had made recommendations which in turn had informed the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB);

the formation of a Joint Steering Group,including teachers’ organisations such as the NUT, to inform the PwC survey, which in turn had led to the formation of the School Workforce Remodelling Working Party to tackle issues of workload;

the production of an STRB Workload Report; and

the potential for a historic agreementon workload between the Government and trades unions on the way ahead on standards and workload.

Stephen Hillier believed the potential advantages of such an agreement might include:

higher standards through more individualised teaching and learning;
teachers’ time freed by better use of time, additional support staff, possibly with changing roles and by physical resources such as ICT and improved buildings; and
improved school leadership.

He considered that the potential benefits for teachers might include:

targets for average hours;
the increased delegation of tasks;
increased work/life balance;
more time for planning, preparation, marking and reporting;
time for leadership and change management;
a settlement on cover;
tackling bureaucracy; and
increased opportunities for continuing professional development.

The increased delegation of tasks was felt to represent a significant opportunity to alter workplace practices. Twenty five administrative and clerical tasks had been identified as being undertaken by many qualified teachers currently, which could be better undertaken by non-teaching staff. If such a change in workplace culture took place, it could lead not only to the easing of teachers’ workload but also to freeing highly trained and skilled teaching staff for the task of raising standards of teaching and learning.

It was acknowledged, however, that there were tensions surrounding schools’ ability to afford to employ non-teaching staff for such roles, combined with the issue of extending the roles of non-teaching staff as they currently existed. This might lead to questioning whether there was a need to develop a tier of non-teaching staff which had a higher level of training, responsibility and reward than currently existed, within and outside the classroom.

Thirty two schools had been identified to act as ‘Pathfinders’ on workload and workforce issues. They had been deliberately chosen to be representative across a range of geographic locations, school sizes, educational phases and ability ranges. The intention was to establish school-generated reform, with a national dissemination of issues raised and lessons learned.

The DfES had sought to indicate the potential issues and areas which Pathfinder schools would focus on but it was intended that schools themselves would devise solutions to these issues. To this end, school action plans would be submitted to the DfES which it was hoped would reflect a range of possibilities.

Dissemination would take place throughout the process rather than only at its conclusion. It was not envisaged that fully formed solutions to all issues would emerge at the conclusion of one year, but rather that lessons could be learned nationally for creating a change in workforce culture.

A further key occurrence would be the announcement of the outcome of the Comprehensive Spending Review in July 2002. It was intended that in the light of this, the Secretary of State for Education and Skills would announce her proposals in September, when the Pathfinder project would begin.

Stephen Hillier concluded his presentation by expressing the hope that consensus between the Government and teacher and non-teaching staff unions would lead to an improvement both of educational standards and teacher workload.

In response to a question from a delegate concerning the longer-term future for funding any provision arising from the Pathfinder project, it was acknowledged that the specific level of funding available to Pathfinder schools would not necessarily be available at the same levels to all schools nationally. He believed that any additional funding might need to be phased, with the result that any cultural changes to working practices might need to take place on a phased basis also.

In addition, if schools employed additional staff as approved through schools’ action plans, the DfES would ensure that such staff would enjoy security of employment until at least April 2004 and would not simply find that their contracts ended along with the conclusion of the project.

In response to a question concerning the use and treatment of supply teaching staff, Stephen Hillier agreed that these were important issues which might be addressed through the Pathfinder project, but that issues such as the availability of professional development opportunities available to agency employed staff might be addressed through other initiatives, such as the quality marking of supply teaching agencies. He hoped in particular that Pathfinder schools could explore potential solutions such as deploying non- teaching staff to provide cover where supervision was required rather than specific teaching and learning, or through schools employing supply teachers to be attached to the school, to provide cover as and when needs arose.

Mike Walker, National Employers’ Organisation for School Teachers (NEOST)

Mike Walker began by explaining that his work necessarily focused on the employers’ perspective. He went on to say that many of the educational initiatives introduced by the Government had been positive, such as the National Literacy and Numeracy Strategies. As this was a reforming Government, initiatives would continue to be forthcoming. There was no single solution to the demands made on teachers but there was a growing consensus regarding tackling workload between all those involved in teaching.

There were several issues that required the involvement of both employers and employees:

there had been an 80 per cent increase in the number of support staff working in schools, although this had not had a significant effect on teachers’ workload.
it had also been suggested that class size did not have an effect on teachers’ workload, although the intensity of teachers’ work could be eased by smaller classes.
the level of independence under which schools should operate was unclear.
the levers that affect standards were unclear.

Mike Walker went on to consider what was required of the Pathfinders project. He suggested that the key outcomes should be workable, affordable and better then the existing situation. The factors that would affect this would be financial considerations, the personnel involved, school systems, use of ICT and the effectiveness of national, local and school leadership.

NEOST was addressing several issues that had emerged from the STRB report on teacher workload, for example, it was considering guidance on work/life balance by identifying what PPMR time was required for teachers, the time needed by the Leadership Group to undertake its responsibilities and how to respond to the target set for the DfES in the STRB report of a 45 hour working week for teachers by 2006. NEOST was also working closely with support staff unions regarding working time to investigate the links between support staff’s duties, skills and responsibilities. It was essential to establish whether it was feasible for support staff to carry out classroom cover for teachers. It was acknowledged that it would take time for such changes to occur, but it was hoped that some early lessons would be learnt from the Pathfinders project.

Following the presentation, the Chair invited questions. In response to a query regarding the period of time it would be appropriate for support staff to cover for teachers, he said that this would depend on several factors and that pay and conditions for support staff needed to be addressed as well as skills and training and a fair and balanced career structure. He cited an example of a school that had established cover supervisors successfully, although this had taken careful organisation.