How to reduce teacher workload: a practical guide for team leaders

Ask any group of teachers what would improve their wellbeing, and workload usually comes up first. If you lead a team and you have been searching for how to reduce teacher workload, the good news is that you have more control than you might think. You cannot change the length of the term or the number of students, but you can change a surprising amount of what fills your team's week.

Wellbeing activities have their place, but they rarely help if the workload underneath them stays the same. A staff yoga session does not mark thirty books. So the most practical wellbeing work a team leader can do is often subtraction.

Start with an honest workload audit

Before you change anything, find out where the time actually goes. At your next team meeting, ask everyone to list the tasks that take up their time outside lessons. Then ask three simple questions about each one.

Who is this for? If the honest answer is "for the folder" rather than for students, it is a candidate to cut.

Does it change anything? A data drop that nobody reads, or a planning template that is completed and never opened again, is cost without benefit.

Could it be done more simply? Many tasks are worth keeping but are done in a heavier way than they need to be.

Listen carefully to the answers. The people doing the work usually know exactly where the waste is. Often they are just waiting for someone to ask.

How to reduce teacher workload: five changes a team leader can make

Look at marking first. Marking is often the biggest hidden load. Agree as a team what feedback actually helps students move forward, and stop the kinds of marking that mainly exist to be seen. Whole-class feedback, live feedback during lessons and short, focused comments can all do the job in far less time.

Share planning, not just resources. If five people are each planning the same unit alone, that is duplication. Divide the units, plan each one well once, and share them.

Protect meeting time. Ask whether each meeting needs to be a meeting. Information can go in a short email. Save meetings for discussion and decisions, and finish on time.

Agree sensible email habits. Agree as a team when emails are and are not expected to be answered, and model it yourself. If you write late at night, schedule the email to send in the morning.

Stop something before you start something. When a new initiative arrives, ask what it replaces. If the answer is nothing, the load simply grows.

Workload, wellbeing and when to look further

Reducing workload is one of the most caring things a leader can do, but it is not the whole answer. If a colleague tells you they feel overwhelmed or unable to cope, a lighter week will not be enough on its own. Have a quiet, private conversation, encourage them to speak to their doctor or a qualified professional, and make sure they know about any staff support your school offers.

Some of the load will also sit above you. When a whole-school task creates work that does not help students, say so to senior leaders, calmly and with specific examples. Middle leaders are often best placed to see the real cost of a decision.

Over more than twenty years in education, I have come to believe that teams rarely need another wellbeing initiative as much as they need fewer things that waste their time. Protecting your team's time is leadership, not a soft extra.

If you are new to leading a team, the free middle leader checklist will help you decide what to look at first.

So here is a question for this week. What is one task your team does that nobody would miss if it stopped?

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