You Can’t Say You’re Reducing Workload if Teachers are Expected to Make 8,000 Progress Judgements a Year
"For all the workload-busting initiatives, there is still a rather large elephant in the room. I’m talking, of course, about data"
A lot has been written recently about workload. Type the word into Twitter and you’ll be met with a whole host of blogs and tweets from mutinous teachers, pitchforks in hand, ready to bring down the practices that are taking up too much of their precious time.
For all the workload-busting initiatives, however, there is still a rather large elephant in the room. In fact, in most cases, the elephant is something of a colossus. I’m talking, of course, about data.
However, I’m not just talking about the kind determined by SATs at the end of each Key Stage, but the thousands upon thousands of objectives being tracked and reported on in between.
While organisations are breaking new and exciting ground in the field of assessment with techniques such as comparative judgement, the actual reporting and tracking of data in most schools I have been in can often be one of the biggest contributors to workload and stress.
I’m sure I’m not the only teacher who can think of ex-colleagues driven out of the profession due to the demands of data. From NQTs to headteachers, the final numbers in that spreadsheet can literally make or break careers.
We’ve all experienced the omnipotence of data and the fear it can induce, but very rarely do we question what it is and how much we should trust it. For schools who are serious about reducing workload and teacher burnout, shining a light on their data practices should be number one on the list.
Let’s start with the sheer amount of it. In a recent Twitter poll, 72% of respondents said they had to use a tracker to assess more than thirty objectives per child over the year. That is almost 1,000 data points a year.
At one school, I was expected to make a judgement on 93 objectives for each child in reading, writing and maths alone. And this was not a ‘yes or no’ scenario, either. The 93 objectives had to be constantly revisited and turned green on the tracker; only when it had been highlighted three times could a child be deemed to have ‘got it’.
Highlighting each of these objectives three times for 30 children meant that over one school year, I had to make more than 8,000 judgements on progress. How can schools possibly rely on the data they are generating when the margin for error is so immense?
The numbers involved would be comical if they didn’t wield such power. In most schools, progress has been monetised by the introduction of performance-related pay. Each teacher, irrespective of the year group they teach, is expected to show linear progress for every child. Two neat jumps up the ladder, thank you very much.
And, as if by magic, there it appears, just in time for that performance management meeting. But what does the data gleaned between Y2 and Y6 consist of? Can the validity of thousands of teacher judgements be assured across year groups? And what about different schools?
The importance of those shiny green cells in the spreadsheet cannot be overemphasised, but in many schools they amount to little more than an over-tired teacher madly clicking or highlighting at the end of the half term, based often on a gut feeling or the most recent lesson taught.
Each school will have a different lever for turning that cell green. In some, it might come purely down to tests. In others, teacher judgement may be given precedence. But in that case, how are the final judgements being reached?
With the stakes so high, is it just remotely possible that a bit of confirmation bias may just be creeping into the process? Here are five actions that school leaders could take tomorrow to improve this situation:
- Count the number of judgements you are asking each teacher to record and decide what constitutes ‘too much’
- Agree to reduce this number by deciding which curriculum objectives do not need to be reported on
- Stop asking teachers to revisit objectives on the tracker; make each choice a binary ‘can/can’t’
- Decide what ‘can’ means and be rigorous about ensuring consistency
- Ask teachers which objectives children can do or which ones they can’t – asking both is a waste of time
If we are serious about tackling workload and increasing teacher retention rates, then we must start with our towers of data. How many are built on sand?
