When three independent reports on reducing workload were published in March last year as part of the government’s Workload Challenge, there were high hopes they would improve the lot of overburdened teachers.

Nicky Morgan, the education secretary at the time, said that she hoped the reports on planning, marking and data management would “make a difference to the lives of teachers”. The documents were also welcomed by the education unions, which were represented on the groups that wrote them.

However, 16 months later, we have now learned that, in a Department for Education-commissioned survey, only a fifth of senior leaders said that their school had implemented the reports’ recommendations.

Why has uptake of the recommendations been so limited? And with stories emerging every week about the crushing workload in the profession - 16 teachers have reportedly quit Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Primary, in Bristol, for this reason - is the Workload Challenge dead?

Some headteachers and union officials think that additional workload generated by a hyperactive government has left schools struggling to implement the recommendations.

Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, calls “curriculum and qualification reform” an “external juggernaut” that has made extra workload “non-negotiable” at secondary level.

At primary level, James Bowen, director of the NAHT Edge middle leaders’ union, says that efforts to reduce workload have been undermined by the government’s changes to assessment and the curriculum.

Andrew Morris, head of pay, conditions and bargaining at the NUT teaching union, says that the reports “weren’t given sufficient publicity” by the DfE when they were launched.

“It took a lot of work to get the secretary of state to announce that she did endorse the recommendations and supported them,” he claims. A slightly different emphasis - telling teachers not to do certain things - could have increased the reports’ effectiveness, he argues.

Dawn Copping is headteacher of Shaw Primary Academy in Thurrock, Essex, and chaired the group that produced the report on marking. She admits the “generic” style of the recommendations might have meant they were missed by time-poor school leaders “inundated with information”.

In response to the survey’s findings, she says that she was “surprised in terms of my hopes for the impact on the report”, but acknowledges that school leaders have competing priorities. “With concerns about Ofsted and the high-stakes accountability around Sats outcomes and so on, I wonder if in some way school leaders are distracted by those sorts of things,” she says.

The most positive gloss one can put on the survey findings is that we are still in the early stages of change. Morris points out that the survey was carried out in the autumn of 2016.

Bowen agrees this could be a factor in the low uptake. “This was the academic year where I think people started getting their teeth into workload. I would imagine those figures will go up,” he says.

Whatever the reason behind the low levels of engagement with the Workload Challenge, it’s clear that the problem it sought to address has not gone away.

Even the majority of the public fear that workload pressures are driving teachers out of the profession, according to a survey released this week.

In terms of where the system goes from here, Morris thinks that the government needs to add provisions relating to working time and professional duties to the school teachers’ pay and conditions document.

However, for Bowen, a more “directive approach” by the DfE could “do more harm than good”. “What works in one school may not be as effective in another when it comes to tackling workload issues,” he says.

While the Workload Challenge might not have delivered on its promise yet, the consensus seems to be that it is too early to call time on it. And Copping urges those school leaders who haven’t yet read the reports to do so.

“Just really stop and think, ‘Are there any habits I could break? Is there anything I’m doing just because we’ve always done it?’”

A Department for Education spokeswoman says: “Forty per cent of those surveyed said the average teacher workload had reduced, but we know it still remains a concern for schools and teachers.

“That’s why we are working with the unions, teachers and Ofsted to challenge unhelpful practices that create extra work, and why we published a clear action plan on 24 February setting out the steps we will take to help tackle this, which includes a programme of targeted support for schools.”