Nick Clegg in new drive to cut teachers' workloads

Nick Clegg today called on teachers to speak out against the “pointless” tasks they have to perform as he launched a drive to cut their workload outside the classroom.

The Deputy Prime Minister said teachers are at risk of being “engulfed” in unnecessary administrative work such as writing over-detailed lesson plans and filling in health and safety forms.

Launching a “workplace challenge” he said teachers should submit their examples of unnecessary work that should be scrapped on a dedicated page on the Times Educational Supplement’s website.

The ideas will be examined by a panel of teachers and education experts who will come up with a plan of action in the new year.

If the pilot scheme works it will be rolled out to other public sector jobs, Mr Clegg said.

Speaking at Belleville Primary school in Clapham today he said: “We’re asking teachers across the country to take a long, hard look at how they spend their working day and what pointless processes and paperwork they think should be cut or scrapped altogether.”

Teachers in England work a 48-hour week on average, with only 20 of those spent in the classroom, the Deputy Prime Minister’s Office said.

The rest of their time is taken up with tasks such as administration, lesson preparation and marking, with data showing that England’s teachers spend more time on these tasks than those in countries with high-performing education systems.

Mr Clegg said: “I believe it’s time for us to stop that runaway train of bureaucracy in its tracks, giving our teachers more time to do what they do best - creating and planning the best possible lessons and experiences for our children.”

He added that some people are still under the “misguided” impression that teaching is a profession built around short days and long holidays, but added: “Talk to a teacher and they’ll tell you about their working week of 50 hours or more. They’ll also tell you how much of this time they feel is wasted on unnecessary processes, box-ticking and form-filling.

“We’re talking about hours spent struggling to stay on top of piles of incident reports, over-detailed lesson plan templates, health and safety forms, departmental updates, training requests and so on that threaten to engulf them every week.” Teaching Unions welcomed today’s speech.