All parts of the education system, including Initial Teacher Education/Training, have a role to play in reducing the unnecessary tasks that take teachers (and school leaders) away from their core task of improving outcomes for children.
Bright Futures SCITT is committed to developing the next generation of outstanding teachers. However, not only do we pride ourselves on a fair and accessible recruitment practice, we also want to be instrumental in helping support the retention of teachers within the profession. As a multi-site provider with a huge educational footprint across Greater Manchester, I want to use this to initiate change around workload and wellbeing for the whole of the education sector.
Workload and wellbeing has always been something I have championed as I want our SCITT to support trainee teachers entering the profession not to simply be ‘retained’ but ‘sustained’ so they can thrive and become part of the future leadership of education – and so real change regarding workload and wellbeing can be enacted and start to take make a real difference of experience for all teachers in the profession.
High workload is one of the most commonly cited drivers for teachers leaving the profession and can be a disincentive for potential new teachers to join. The most effective actions to reduce workload are those that encourage better teaching – by focusing on what makes the most difference, supported by evidence, and making best use of teacher time.[1]
‘Mental Health and Well-being’ is one of our SCITTs learning strands and this strand runs through all that we do at Bright Futures. This blog, based on a document intended to further support mentors to support our trainees achieve a positive work-life balance, might also support other mentors and school-based staff reflect on their own working practice including on lesson planning, lesson preparation and assessment.
Using previously released Department for Education papers, I have collated the key takeaway points from the papers for schools to consider as well as offering the SCITT’s approach to supporting these workload and wellbeing approaches.
Reference:
(DfE, 2018) Addressing Teacher Workload in Initial Teacher Education https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5f57a927d3bf7f723f8f5655/Addressing_Workload_in_ITE.pdf
Wider references:
(DfE 2024) Improve workload and wellbeing for school staff – GOV.UK
(DfE 2019) Ways to reduce workload in your school: tips from school leaders – GOV.UK
(DfE 2016) Eliminating unnecessary workload around marking
(DfE 2016) Eliminating unnecessary workload associated with data management
(DfE 2016) Eliminating unnecessary workload around planning and teaching resources
(DfE 2018 (last updated 2025) Reducing school workload – GOV.UK
DfE guidance recommends…
Focusing on developing the curriculum planning skills of trainees by:
- Reducing the expectation on trainees to develop their own individual lesson plans and curriculum resources for every lesson they teach; instead, trainees should focus on evaluating, using and adapting (where necessary) existing high-quality resources, schemes of work and textbooks;
- Adopting a phased approach to supporting trainees develop curriculum planning skills, including planning sequences of lessons. Curriculum planning at the early stages of teacher training may require a more structured approach, including encouraging the use of high-quality curriculum resources and textbooks to plan a sequence of lessons. As trainees become more secure in the planning; they should be encouraged to evaluate existing resources to assess their quality and make decisions on which are best to use in different contexts.
- Ensuring that only once trainees have a good knowledge of existing resources and sequencing of lessons, should they then start to develop their own plans when these are required. Over time, trainees should also be encouraged to develop more light touch planning over sequences of lessons.
Bright Futures SCITT has a two-stage lesson planning approach which reflects the DfE guidance outlined above. We work closely with mentors to support trainees to develop their planning knowledge, skills and understanding over the course of the programme. We strongly encourage mentors and other school staff to share departmental/age phase SOW, lesson plans/overviews, PowerPoints and high-quality resources. We are very open to trainees learning to plan from ‘scratch’, but this is not an expectation and certainly should not be required every lesson or every week.
Supporting mental health and wellbeing
ITT/ITE providers should:
- ‘Embed workload management in wider well-being and resilience training content’. Bright Futures SCITT does this through our Mental Health and Well-being strand which runs through all we do. All materials are available on Mosaic and open access to mentors.
- ‘Supporting trainees to develop resilience needed to manage unavoidable pressure, demands and pinch points that occur in any profession’. At Bright Futures SCITT all QTS trainees will successfully complete a Mental Health First Aid Lite course, a certified course focusing on both the mental health and wellbeing of the trainee, and that of the school communities they serve. We have a range of mental health, workload and wellbeing sessions embedded into our ambitious curriculum.
- ‘Robust support mechanism and pastoral support’. At Bright Futures SCITT we have a clear pastoral system in place which places the trainee, schools, and children/young people at the centre of our approach. We aim to ensure trainees can carry out their roles effectively, increasing the positive impact they have on the lives of the children and young people they teach.
The DfE conducted a workforce review and three key areas regarding teacher workload were identified.
- Eliminating unnecessary workload around marking
- Effective marking is an essential part of the education process. At its heart, it is an interaction between teacher and pupil: a way of acknowledging pupils’ work, checking the outcomes and making decisions about what teachers and pupils need to do next, with the primary aim of driving pupil progress. This can often be achieved without extensive written dialogue or comments.
- The quantity of feedback should not be confused with the quality. The quality of the feedback, however given, will be seen in how a pupil is able to tackle subsequent work.
- It is recommended that all marking should be meaningful, manageable and motivating.
Meaningful: marking varies by age group, subject, and what works best for the pupil and teacher in relation to any particular piece of work. Trainees/teachers should be encouraged to adjust their approach as necessary and trusted to incorporate the outcomes into subsequent planning and teaching.
- Marking should serve a single purpose – to advance pupil progress and outcomes. Teachers should be clear about what they are trying to achieve and the best way of achieving it.
- Consistency across a department or a school is still important, but this can come from consistent high standards, rather than unvarying practice.
Manageable: marking practice is proportionate and considers the frequency and complexity of written feedback, as well as the cost and time-effectiveness of marking in relation to the overall workload of teachers. This is written into any assessment policy.
- The time taken to mark does not always correlate with successful pupil outcomes and leads to wasted teacher time.
- Senior leaders should take into account the hours teachers spend on marking and have regard to the work-life balance of their staff
- Feedback can take the form of spoken or written marking, peer marking and self-assessment. If the hours spent do not have the commensurate impact on pupil progress: then consider is the process worth it?
Motivating: Marking should help to motivate pupils to progress. This does not mean always writing in-depth comments or being universally positive: sometimes short, challenging comments or oral feedback are more effective. If the teacher is doing more work than their pupils, this can become a disincentive for pupils to accept challenges and take responsibility for improving their work.
- An important element of marking is to acknowledge the work a pupil has done, to value their efforts and achievement, and to celebrate progress.
- Too much feedback can take away responsibility from the pupil, detract from the challenge of a piece of work, and reduce long term retention and resilience-building.
- Pupils should be taught and encouraged to check their own work by understanding the success criteria, presented in an age-appropriate way, so that they complete work to the highest standard.
- Eliminating unnecessary workload around planning and teaching resources
- Teachers spend an undue amount of time planning and resourcing lessons, high quality resources, including textbooks, can support teaching, reduce workload by teachers not having to ‘reinvent the wheel’, and ensure high expectations of the content of lessons and conceptual knowledge. Hattie remarks, ‘there are a million resources available on the internet and creating more seems among the successful wastes of time in which teachers love to engage’[2] and ‘carefully-designed textbooks have [could] play[ed] a crucial role in improving educational outcomes’ (Oates 2014) [3]
- There is a key distinction between the daily lesson plan and lesson planning. Too often, ‘planning’ refers to the production of daily written lesson plans which function as proxy evidence for an accountability ‘paper trail’ rather than the process of effective planning for pupil progress and attainment.
Planning versus Lesson Plans
- As trainees enter the developmental and consultation phase of their training, it can be argued that planning a sequence of lessons is more important than writing individual lesson plans.
- Planning is essential for good teaching but, planning a sequence of lessons is a thinking process.
- Bright Futures SCITT encourages the development of collaboratively produced schemes of work and joint planning
- Where written lesson plans are deemed appropriate (if a trainee is struggling with lesson planning), the purpose and audience of the lesson plan should be made clear: ultimately the purpose of planning is to support the trainees teaching in the classroom effectively.
- If a school has fully resourced schemes of work, these should be available to the trainee. This will support trainees understand the ‘what ‘and ‘why’ of the curriculum, which they should adapt before they deliver the lesson.
- Eliminating unnecessary workload associated with data management
- When used well, data can have a profound and positive impact on pupil progress and effective lesson planning
- The DfE have concluded, that too often, the collection of data becomes an end in itself, divorced from the core purpose of improving outcomes for pupils.
- Effective data collection ensures that every data collection has a clear purpose, and that the process is as efficient as possible.
- Formative assessment data should be used for the teacher’s own planning purposes and to inform professional dialogue. Bright Futures SCITT will address formative assessment during all aspects of the programme and through one of our ITaP blocks.
It is our ambition to develop highly skilled, knowledgeable and resilient teachers who have learnt to manage workload and who want to remain in the profession. This takes a true team effort from SCITT staff, Mentors, Professional Mentors, Lead Mentors and other school staff.
Eleanor Davidson is Director of Bright Futures SCITT.
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[1] Smithers and Robinson (2003); Teachers’ Analysis Compendium (2017); Hobson, Malderez, Tracey, Homer, Mitchell, Biddulph, Giannakaki, Rose, Pell, Roper, Chambers and Tomlinson, 2007 (Newly qualified teachers’ experiences of their first year of teaching).
[2] Hattie J (2012) ‘Visible Learning for Teachers, Maximising Impact on Learning, page 64.
[3] Oats T (2014) 181744-why-textbooks-count-tim-oates.pdf