Findings from the ‘Working Lives of Teachers and Leaders’ Report

Findings from the ‘Working Lives of Teachers and Leaders’ Report 

In spring 2022, the UK government carried out the first wave of a survey into the working lives of teachers and leaders in state schools in England. 11,177 responses were given from the 505,633 teachers and leaders working at that point, with the report published in April 2023. The headlines from that were no surprise to those of us who have worked in a classroom over the last few years:

• teachers working 48.7 hours a week
  

• leaders working at least 60 hours a week
  

• 66% of teachers reporting that they spent over half of their working time on tasks other than teaching (with 75% of teachers saying that ‘general administrative work’ took up ‘too much’ of their time)
  

• 72% of responses saying the workload was not acceptable

 
The report did acknowledge that some steps have been taken since then to address this, such as 29% of responses reporting that revisions to marking and feedback policies have reduced workload (although some reported that changes have added to their workload further, such as increased data tracking and monitoring of student progress). There are other findings linked to many aspects of working within a school beyond workload, such as wellbeing, job satisfaction and pay, and the full report can be found here.

At the end of September 2024, a summary of wave 2 of the survey was published, based on results from 10,853 teachers and leaders surveyed between 2nd February and 11th May 2023 (‘during a period of industrial action and wider cost of living pressure, and before the 2023 pay award that was agreed in July’, as the report notes). The full report will be available in spring 2025 and will include more detailed reporting, but the summary paints a clear picture of daily life as a teacher. 

The summary can be found here and is worth a read if you can find a spare few minutes. In this blog, we will focus on teacher workload, but the summary also shows findings linked to flexible working, pay, and retention. Key statistics include 69% of respondents being unhappy with their salary and 36% indicating that they were considering leaving the classroom within the next 12 months (excluding retirement). This aligns with a Department for Education (DfE) report from earlier this year, which revealed that nearly 40,000 teachers left in the 2022-2023 academic year – an increase from wave 1, where 25% of those surveyed felt this way.

We also wanted to highlight the results linked to wellbeing and mental health which, while ‘broadly consistent’ with wave 1’s results, were eye-opening. 88% of teachers and leaders had experienced work-related stress, 63% had faced a negative impact on their mental health and 44% self-categorised as feeling high anxiety on the day before they had taken the survey. 73% of responses felt they the job does not leave enough time for their personal life. 

Sadly, statistics around workload were not surprising. When asked to estimate their total working hours in their most recent working week in term time, leaders worked 57.4 hours (11.5 hours a day in the working week) and full-time teachers worked 52.4 hours (10.5 hours a day in the working week). For both groups, this was an increase since wave 1 of the survey. 

Teaching time has remained broadly the same between wave 1 and wave 2, with 17% responding that their workload was acceptable and a slight increase in those reporting that they have ‘sufficient control’ of their workload (30% in wave 2 compared to 26% in wave 1). 

However, 54% of teachers and leaders declared that their workload was ‘unacceptable’ and that they did not have sufficient control over it (compared to 57% in wave 1). 

What can we do to help with this workload at Classroom Secrets? We value each and every person who works within schools! Our campaign for LIFE/work balance began in 2019 and underpins all of our resources – life should always come before work! Our promise to you is to offer choice through a wide range of content and high-quality resources that enable you to gain a LIFE/work balance; by doing so, we hope that workload can be lessened so that more of our colleagues have a happier experience in their jobs. 

We are passionate about doing everything we can to help lighten your workload. Within the last month, we have:

• launched new content for Reading, Writing, Spanish and German; 

• released teaching units for areas of Science in each year group; 
  

• continued to update and improve our schemes for Maths, such as our new Maths in Minutes range, Maths Investigators for deepening skills and Rapid Arithmetic for a quick burst of arithmetic recap; and 
  

• broadened our products for History and Geography, with many more on the way! 

Remember our latest resources can always be found here.

It is also worth shining a light on some of the report’s positives from everybody working within schools – 79% of teachers and leaders enjoyed classroom teaching most or all of the time, and 65% identified feeling valued by their school. 

We have already seen some changes in education since the new government began in July, such as removing the single-word Ofsted judgements, and welcome the further plans to act upon education highlighted by this report (see here to read about these). We will update you when further data becomes available, or if further data is required from teachers to inform a future wave. 

In the meantime, we will continue to support you with our continued growth of new resources and improvement of our current offer so that we can do whatever we can to help with your workload. Remember, you’re all doing an amazing job every day and we hope we can help make this easier for you!