Exploring Teacher Workload - an initial drawing exercise

• I felt that an exploration into patterns regarding teacher workload would be an interesting exercise. I am currently looking at the relationship that big data has with teacher assessment and student achievement. I am exploring this within my subject area of Art & Design at present. Although there is nothing particularly surprising about the what the DfE survey throws up it is, nonetheless, good to see how our working week is broken down. 
  
  'The 2013 Teachers’ Workload Diary Survey provides independently collected data on hours and working patterns of teachers in maintained primary and secondary schools, special schools and academy schools in England. This is the twelfth survey; previous surveys were carried out in 1994, 1996, 2000 and then annually between 2003 and 2010. The 2013 survey was commissioned by the Department for Education (DfE).
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    A sample of 1,004 teachers was achieved - lower than in previous surveys. 
    
    On average, all school teachers report working over 50 hours per week, with primary and secondary school headteachers reporting more than 60 hours. 
    
    Teachers of all types work around 12 hours a week outside what might be regarded as their normal working week. Heads spent around half of this time on school and staff management while classroom teachers spent at least three quarters of it on planning, preparation and assessment (PPA). Time spent on PPA was as common for classroom teachers in primary, secondary and academy schools as teaching at around a third of their total workload. 
    
    Certain types of activities dominated workload for different types of teacher. The majority of a secondary school headteacher workload is made up of activities that relate to school and staff management (61%). 
    
    Other activities were performed to a lesser extent. Non-teaching pupil or parent contact made up 10% - 14% of a classroom teacher’s workload and slightly more than that for headteachers in secondary schools (16%). On average less than 10% of workload was spent on general administrative duties. Headteachers in secondary school spent 11% of their time on individual or professional development, while it was a much smaller proportion of classroom teacher working time (5% or less). 
    
    The most common reasons given to explain the increase in unnecessary and bureaucratic tasks were preparation for an Ofsted inspection (16% of deputy heads and classroom teachers, and 17% heads) and an increase in forms and paperwork (15% of deputy heads and classroom teachers).
    
    Teachers were asked to give examples of what they thought were unnecessary and bureaucratic tasks in a number of different areas. Across all areas two common themes emerged, which were duplication and the level of detail required in certain circumstances. In particular duplication was referred to in terms of paper work, marking and recording pupil progress and data analysis, reporting and evidence gathering. The level of detail was considered by teachers to be unnecessary with regard to planning and preparation and marking and progress recording.' 
    
    
    Taken from the DfE Workload Survey February 2014 
    
    
    
    
  
  Through looking at Florence Nightingale's 'coxcombs' of mortality rates in the Crimean war I felt that the visualisation of such data was a good way of understanding the figures and percentages being collated, particularly because some of the numbers used in the collation of data were large. 
  
  
  
  
  
  Taking the information presented on page 25 of the Teacher Workload document (Figure 10 - Average hours worked by full-time teachers, on grouped activities and in total) I started to draw out the information as a coxcomb chart (or polar area diagram) and broke it into 7 sections: 
  
  Teaching 
  Non-teaching pupil/parent contact
  Planning, preparation and assessment
  School/staff management, General administrative support
  Individual/professional
  Other working activities 
  
  The resultant charts looked like this (please note that these are only sketches that will be refined at a later date):
  
  
  Headteacher: 63.3 weekly working hours
  
  
  
  
  
  Primary classroom teacher: 59.3 weekly working hours
  
  
  
  
  
  Secondary classroom teacher (non-academy): 55.7 weekly working hours
  
  
  
  
  
  A maximum of 7.6 hours difference between these 3 job roles over the course of a week and an average of 11 or 12 hour days. It is interesting to look at the difference in breakdown of responsibilities between a headteacher and a classroom teacher:
  
  
  
  
  
  I then decided to look at the average salaries of classroom teachers and headteachers. This is where the similarities ended. I am not criticising headteacher salaries, nor teacher ones, but the difference is large. Headteachers are obviously responsible for a large body of staff as well as all of the students. This responsibility deserves a high pay in my opinion. Whether or not a headteacher is effective and accountable is another matter altogether. A classroom teacher is also well paid in my opinion although the increase in pressure through accountability measures, passive aggressive governance, a politicised inspectorate, a narrowing band of perceived academic attainment, a regular reduction in funding and a stagnant pay scale does not help ones performance. 
  
  A male headteacher and classroom teacher still receives a higher wage than their female counterparts, which is quite frankly ridiculous. A male headteacher makes an average of £74,400 whilst a female headteacher makes £70,600 and a male classroom teacher earns an average of £35,000 while his female counterpart makes £33,700 (this difference can be seen through the darker band at the outer edge of the next chart):
  
  

  

  Source: TES 2010

  
  The fact that the profession does work so many hours per week, in a highly pressurised and politicised environment where emotions are intense and interactions are highly demanding for long periods of continuous time, has been the main causation of strike action in recent years. Action I agree with. The NUT, and other Unions, have carried out surveys regarding workload and have found some quite remarkable statistics. This vocational profession sees many members of staff working beyond their expected 1265 hours and there is a considerable swell of opinion that a lot of time is taken up with administrative procedures that often repeat themselves in various formats and at different times of year. It often gets in the way of teaching classes, marking & feedback and preparing lessons. It is the intensity and pressure that is causing the problem not necessarily the hours spent working. Teacher morale is low and in an NUT teacher workload survey of 16379 teachers, from 2014 it found that 90% had considered giving up teaching due to current workload levels. 87% claim to know one or more colleagues who have given up the profession due to workload. 96% state that workload has had a detrimental affect on personal/family life. 86% of leavers (other than those retiring) cite workload as the principle reason for leaving the profession. This chart is outlined below. 
  
  

  

  
  

  Finally I wanted to develop these sketches into more a refined study of the data explored so I combined all of these issues - that I feel are interconnected. This is a drawing taking into account large amounts of information from large samples of teachers. It becomes a complex field of information but then again, we are working in a complex field of data information, global pressures and politics. 
  
  
  
  
  
  I am moving onto to more personal drawings of how my classes have performed against their predicted grades set 5 and 7 years before their exams take place and before the tumultuous teenage years begin to have an affect on character, personality, interests and experiences. We need to remember that we are not working with statistics,
  - see my previous blog http://www.theunlessonmanifesto.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/spot-statistical-anomaly.html -
  we are working with young people and we cannot make their progress nor our predictions a wholly mechanical thing. In the words of Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator (1940):
  
  
  '... We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity.....The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed - the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.....Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men - machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts!.....You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure...
  
  
  
  
  ...Then - in the name of democracy - let us use that power - let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world - a decent world that will give men a chance to work - that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfil that promise. They never will!'