There always seems to be so much to do in education, and so little time to do it.
One of the problems is that we keep adding more and more to our list of things to get done. And this is why we need to stop! Because if we don’t, we will become truly overwhelmed.
We know that workload is causing burnout, so we need to figure out what might be going wrong. There are a number of things:
- We keep adding more and more to our work, without thinking about what we could stop doing.
- We are inclined to think that more is better.
- We don’t stop to ask ourselves often enough whether there might be a better way of doing things.
There has always been a tendency in education to squeeze in more and more. The experience of lockdown has caused many to rethink about what is essential and what can be dropped.
One way to help us is to think about the Pareto principle which states that 80 percent of the output comes from 20 percent of the input. It turns out that this is the case across many sectors, not just in business, and there’s a chance that it applies in education as well. It doesn’t have to be exactly 80/20, but the message still holds true – that there are some things in schools that make a big difference to outcomes for pupils, and some that don’t. So, we need to focus on the things that make the biggest difference and drop or cut back on those that don’t.
It is a matter of finding the ‘best bets’, to quote Dylan Wiliam. And we do this by asking ourselves what is likely to have the greatest impact for all our pupils, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds. And it turns out that one of the ‘best bets’ is a focus on the quality of the curriculum.
This is reflected in the quality of education judgement in the latest Ofsted framework, and it means that all schools are paying closer attention the quality of the curriculum. This takes time! It can’t be done in one staff meeting. It needs us to be thinking about finding the big ideas in the units we are teaching; it means reading interesting books about the units so that we can share these with our pupils; it means thinking hard about why we are teaching this unit and how it builds on previous work or paves the way for future work. It means researching high-quality materials, rather than second-rate, sometimes inaccurate worksheets. And all this takes time.
So, where do we find this time, in order to do this important work? Well, we need to look at the things that go on in schools, because they always have done, like marking.
Most marking makes no difference to pupils’ learning. As a result, we need to stop doing virtually all of it and move to whole class feedback instead. And we need to be focusing on high-quality questioning and discussions in lessons, instead of thinking that every piece of work needs to be marked.
We also need to think differently about gathering evidence of ‘impact’. It is time consuming and pretty pointless spending hours inputting ‘data’ into tracking systems. The numbers generally don’t tell us anything about what a child can or can’t do. What’s more, they often mask gaps in pupils’ learning. And we have to ask ourselves why Ofsted is no longer considering internally generated school data? This is because it is neither valid, nor reliable. Instead of collecting these ‘numbers’, let’s talk with pupils about their work, let them showcase their work and ask ourselves the important question: ‘I have taught this, have my pupils got it? How do I know?’
Getting back on track means focusing on the things that really make a difference and being very tough on cutting back those things which we’ve always done but are not worth the time. Instead of working ourselves to the bone, let’s remember that we are human beings first and professionals second; that the young people we teach are human beings first and learners second. And that means giving them the best, without breaking our backs!
