A head of department’s to-do list is often incredibly varied. Consider the following, which I would say is typical of what many HoDs face at any given moment in time:
- Order whiteboard pens
- Complete performance management
- Consider the Year 7 curriculum
- Review exam board for Year 11
- Review behaviour contracts for certain students
- Line-management meeting
- Deal with parental complaints
The range of tasks here is huge - but it generally falls into two areas: administrative and pedagogical.
As someone who has just completed their first year running a department, I found it hard at first to get used to switching between these two types of task. I found that when I kept on top of administrative tasks, the pedagogical workload suffered - and vice versa.
However, over the course of the year I learned some simple tips and tricks and workload hacks that could help any other HoD - whether they are new in post or with a few years under their belt - to make their to-do list a tad easier to manage.
Tips to help HoDs manage their workload
1. Clearly split your responsibilities with other TLR holders
Most HoDs, especially in maths, science and English, will have an additional Teaching and Learning Responsibility holder within the faculty. Depending upon their job remit, there could be a good opportunity to hand over some of your tasks to this member of staff.
For example, in my scenario my second in faculty is a greater subject expert than me, and so I can pass over curriculum work, particularly in relation to quality assuring our collaboratively planned lessons, to them.
It may be that you have a TLR holder who is very effective at certain administrative tasks; for example, planning and printing mock papers or leading on behavioural concerns.
More ways to cut teacher workload:
2. Get administrative tasks done quickly
I’ve come to find that there are a lot of administrative tasks to do, but they tend to be quite quick to complete.
Ordering pens may take five minutes, for example; while considering which class to put a new starter in perhaps takes a couple of minutes. Dealing with a parent response, as long as it’s not too complicated, perhaps 10 minutes.
Given this, my advice is to deal with administrative jobs as soon as they come to you. They’re easy to forget but quick to get out of the way, and this ensures that the wheels keep turning for everyone else.
3. Mass-complete administrative jobs
Furthermore, it’s worth considering if there are a set of administrative jobs that you can get done in one go.
For example, if you are deciding on Year 11 past papers to use for homework, and getting them over to reproduction, consider doing all of the papers required for a year in one go, rather than going back and doing this administrative job every fortnight or so.
Granted, it will take longer in the first instance, but it is overall a far more efficient and time-saving way to get through administrative tasks and it means you can tick it off your list for good.
4. Build in pedagogical time
Pedagogical jobs typically take longer to do and so require a different approach.
For example, reviewing an assessment, reconsidering a unit of work or changing around the order of content being taught for one or multiple year groups are all lengthy jobs that cannot be done during a break time.
Therefore, try to build in some time during your week when you can focus in on completing these pedagogical jobs. Perhaps one period a week or fortnight can be put aside in your diary to work on these types of jobs.
It’s easy to let this time slip but the work you have to do in these areas is important for the school, so it’s worth putting your own time first to focus fully on the task at hand.
5. Signpost delays for administrative tasks
If you know you are going to struggle to complete certain administrative tasks to a deadline you have been given, make sure you signpost this to any stakeholders that it may impact.
For example, if your purchase order for everything you need for the following academic year is not going to be with the finance department on time, then tell them. This avoids more emails following up on things you already know you need to do.
In an ideal world, there would be two HoDs for each department, or a non-teaching HoD, so that all of these jobs can be done on time with sufficient time spent on each.
However, this is never going to happen in reality, so hopefully some of these strategies will help to make your life a little easier.
Nathan Burns is a head of maths and author of Inspiring Deep Learning with Metacognition. He tweets @MrMetacognition
