Teachers have called on education secretary Gavin Williamson to provide financial compensation for the burden of grading GCSE and A-level students this year.

And they have spoken of their “utter dismay” over the workload involved.

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In total, 10,000 teachers from the NEU teachers’ union have written a joint letter to Mr Williamson calling for a one-off payment of £500 for each teacher to compensate, pointing to the £400 extra payments that the Scottish government has awarded teachers for their extra assessment work.

The union has found that members are working 12 hours extra per week on average in addition to their usual workload because of the need to build up evidence for teacher-assessed grades.

GCSEs and A levels 2021: The extra workload burden on teachers

The vast majority - 94 per cent - of NEU survey respondents have said there has been no reduction in their usual workload to mitigate this.

The letter says that after the “chaos” of last year’s results, “headteachers and principals dearly hoped the government had learned a lesson”.

“However, once again ministers have failed to adequately plan and prepare a system to give fairness to our students, and educators have been left to pick up the pieces,” it adds.

And it says teachers have been left in “utter dismay at your department’s handling of the process of awarding qualification grades to GCSE, A-level, Btec and other vocational students this year”.

The letter also states that teachers have been forced to “bear the brunt” of huge amounts of additional work to make the grading system work this year and that the situation now could have been foreseen, with Mr Williamson “repeatedly warned of the urgent need for a Plan B over many months”.

The 12 additional hours extra worked by members does not include “other tasks done as part of the grading process, such as reading guidance from exam boards, creating assessments, explaining the process to students or parents and preparing evidence for exam board scrutiny or appeals”, the letter adds.

The NEU survey also reveals that: 

• 98 per cent of respondents have had to mark extra student work to provide evidence for grades. 
• 95 per cent say their workload has increased as a result. 
• 85 per cent say other work/tasks have not been reduced. 
• More than three-quarters believe a plan B at the start of the academic year and earlier provision of information to teachers from government would have made the situation in their school or college more manageable.