Staff are permitted to leave earlier than their contractual after AP hours i.e. after 2.45pm.
Each Friday, we finish work by 1.30pm providing all reporting are completed. This means that instead of working till 4pm, they can leave 2.5 hours early. This incentive provides our staff to recoup, energise, spend time for themselves and with freinds and family.
• Ask your staff members’ opinions on issues that affect their health and wellbeing, such as workload, and how much work they're doing outside of working hours
• Consult staff about what would make a positive difference to their workload and wellbeing: is it changing the marking policy, or using the school budget for weekly yoga classes?
• Depending on what comes up most often in staff responses, make changes where possible. We've suggested some changes below, but take on board staff suggestions first
• Send out a survey at the start of the school year, and another at the end of the year, and compare the results.
Keep, ditch or tweak
Give staff a framework to give feedback on what's working and what needs to change. Use a 'keep, ditch or tweak' system to let staff members vote or share their thoughts on activities that are adding to their workload. They can vote to:
• Keep it (as it is, no changes), or
• Tweak it (keep with a change), or
• Ditch it (get rid of it altogether)
For each task, staff at Next Gen AP weigh up the impact on pupils' welfare or outcomes, vs the impact on their workload. Roughly speaking, this means they vote to:
• Keep tasks that have a medium-to-high impact on pupils, regardless of the impact on workload
• Ditch or tweak tasks that have low-to-medium impact on pupils and high-to-medium impact on workload
Consult with staff and union representatives
• Be open to having union meetings on the school premises
• Make sure the leadership team listens to union representatives and takes on their feedback. For example, take on board suggestions from your union rep on how to carry out lesson observations
• Always take on staff opinions before introducing a new initiative, such as bringing in a new reading scheme
• Keep informal lines of communication with staff open, so staff can come to you with any issues, and they can be resolved swiftly
Give teachers and leaders extra PPA time and let them plan together
• Give teachers more than the statutory provision for planning, preparation and assessment (PPA) time
• Give year group teams set time for planning lessons together as a team, so they can share resources and ideas, and save time
• Offer teachers who are also middle leaders additional PPA time, and give them more time out of class if they're running a specific project, e.g. Science Week
Create a positive working environment and culture of collaboration
• Avoid having a "finger-pointing" culture, and never blame individual teachers for things that have gone wrong. Instead, seek to promote a culture of collaboration by discussing different approaches and supporting staff to improve their practice through peer-mentoring and CPD
• Create a positive working environment and, where possible, bring staff together
• Print out positive comments from national training mornings the school runs and put these on your school walls. The senior leadership team (SLT) could also bring treats into the staffroom so everyone can get together for a chat
Be clear on scheduling and the purpose of meetings
• Where possible, add the date of each meeting to your school calendar at the start of the academic year, and try to make minimal changes to this schedule
• Where meetings need to be changed, leaders should explain the reasons to staff very clearly
• As each meeting approaches, consider whether or not it still needs to happen, and look to give staff a week’s notice before cancelling it
• Don't hold meetings unless they have a specific purpose
• Combine tasks and meetings, where possible. For example, if you're going through the model for the self-evaluation form (SEF) and discussing with staff what they need to do, then also give staff the time to write the SEF as part of the meeting so they don't need to find further time to complete this work
Focus on ‘meaningful' marking, planning and report writing
• Get rid of "deep-marking" (if you haven't already) and make sure your marking policy reflects quality over quantity when it comes to feedback.
• As long as staff are planning their lessons somehow, don't specify a format or require staff to complete a paper lesson plan. As long as there are no issues with planning, staff should be able to continue with whatever is working best for them
• Only focus on what's necessary when it comes to report writing. Observe the statutory requirements for reporting to parents, but don't ask teachers to provide excessive detail.
Value staff and allow days off for once-in-a-lifetime events
• Staff are your school's best resources: make this part of your school's ethos and values
• Always consider and aim to accept requests from staff to attend personal events, such as their child’s first nativity play or a graduation
• Make sure staff know in advance that you won't be able to allow every request, but you'll try your best to accommodate them when the request is reasonable
Offer CPD and social activities
• Prioritise continuous professional development (CPD), as this motivates staff and has an impact on their wellbeing
• Where possible, put on wellbeing days that offer the opportunity for staff to take time away from school, and connect as a team
• Create a social committee that organises social get-togethers outside of work
Distribute school improvement workload evenly between all staff
• Set up your school improvement plan (SIP) so both teachers and support staff input into the school improvement action plan
• Ask individual staff members to assign themselves specific actions with set deadlines, and link these to individuals’ performance objectives
As different members of staff take on different projects, this means the workload is shared out and more manageable.