Last year, at Prince Henry’s Grammar School in Otley, West Yorkshire, the findings of the Marking, Planning and Data Workload Review groups were presented to colleagues in a whole-staff meeting. Everyone from classroom teachers to SLT was asked to think …
Our staff survey in January 2016 showed us that workload was an issue at our school. Marking was one of the tasks our teachers were spending a large amount of time on, often over 20 hours a week - but …
Like many of the schools in this series of blog posts, our first point of call when looking to address teacher workload were the three independent review group reports on the topic. Staff forums and regular meetings provided our Senior …
September 2017 Like many other schools around the country, we at Barr Beacon School found marking in a way that felt thorough and yet was not overly time consuming to be a significant challenge. A year ago, we reduced our …
The University of Greenwich’s Primary Partnership is an outstanding provider of initial teacher training (Ofsted 2016). The partnership comprises over 200 maintained schools and academies across 19 local authorities in London, Kent, Essex and the southeast of England. Since the …
Why do we mark? At the end of my first year of teaching I met with each of my students and discussed their progress. I was looking with Kate at her latest A level English literature essay. I had written …
School improvement is all too often overcomplicated by leaders, who are under pressure to make ‘quick wins’, as a result of the high stakes culture that schools now find themselves in. As a result, teachers are asked to do things, …
Westfield Community Primary School is a high performing school working in a demanding area of Wigan. My staff are highly professional and dedicated - but never complacent. We believe pupils do best in an environment of high expectations and teachers …
I’m pleased that Ofsted has been involved with the Teacher Workload Review Groups. These led to the three recent reports aimed at reducing workload associated with marking, planning and data management. Along with two other Ofsted colleagues, I worked on …
Right from the onset of the new National Curriculum and the removal of levels we decided as a Multi-Academy Trust (The White Horse Federation) to review how we collected and used performance data. We took our ‘levels’ thinking hats off and …