One of the most frustrating aspects of being a teacher is the amount of time we devote to tasks that are unrelated to teaching or learning.

There is always something to supervise, a tracker to be updated or an administrative process to be satisfied.

The reality, though, is that as schools grow, change or enter high-pressure calendar periods, teachers are often left doing these jobs that slowly add to their workload.

The 3 per cent club

I refer to these tasks as 3 per cent issues - they are never at the top of anyone’s to-do list and they seem small and easy but collectively they can quickly add up to become overwhelming.

As such, a personal leadership goal for me this year has been to tackle as many of these 3 per cent issues as possible and help to free up teachers’ time to get them back to teaching.

One example has been making it easier for teachers (or, indeed, any staff member) to request support from the cleaning team. With a four-storey school catering for 2,200 students, 310 of whom are in the foundation stage, things inevitably get wet and sticky.

A sticky situation

Anyone who has worked with young children will know that it is not always possible to quickly report the issue - you might not have the means to make a call, write an email or log a report.

Having walked through (quite literally) this situation when dropping into a lesson, it immediately jumped out as an area where action could make an immediate impact.

I realised that what we needed was a quick and simple way to share the incident to the team directly; something that could be done in as few clicks as possible.

The idea was simple - an app you could use to take a picture, tag a location and send to the cleaning time. The only snag? I’m a PE teacher by trade and have no coding experience.

Simple process

Yet this proved hardly any barrier at all. I used a tool called JotForm App, which proved intuitive and most of the process of building the app was entirely automated.

The website guides you through the process of building from scratch or using a pre-made design with simple drag-and-drop customisations.

As a progressive web app, it can be pinned to the home screen of any device, accessed through a weblink or authenticated by an organisation, making it highly versatile and unobtrusive. This means you don’t need to go through any app store approval processes.

The build and testing took less than two hours - a small investment for what has proved to be a very useful tool already.

In the first week the app recorded 30 successful uses, while also being positively received by the facilities team. It allows them to prioritise their work based on the level of urgency.

Subtract, don’t add to workload

As a leadership team member responsible for professional growth, it’s all too easy to fall into a pattern of working where you continually add but never subtract.

I have come to learn that an equally important aspect of the role in providing opportunities for growth is to spend time breaking down barriers and inefficient processes that leave people feeling that they just don’t have the capacity to access these opportunities.

Having got the app up and running, there are now other 3 per cent issues in my sights. I plan to produce weekly one-minute training videos that are linked to key calendar events, designed to upskill teachers and improve their efficiency in anticipation of processes like report writing or parents’ evenings, for which lengthy annual training sessions prove to be ineffective.

This will make it much easier for staff to find what they need, rather than them trying to remember everything from an hour-long session held during Inset week or at the end of an already busy teaching day weeks ago.

We’ll probably never eliminate every 3 per cent issue, but tackling those that we can allows us to win back time for teachers to get on with what they do best - teach.

Niall Statham is head of physical education and a senior leader at Hartland International School in Dubai

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