Please believe me when I say that I genuinely welcome conversations from government on teacher workload and the recruitment and retention issues that the education sector is currently battling with. The still-pretty-new education secretary deciding to use his first major speech at the recent ASCL conference as an opportunity to focus on workload has to be a positive thing.

However, when I hear Damian Hinds talking about a moratorium on any more curriculum or assessment reforms and stripping away meaningless tasks that have little to no impact on children’s outcomes, I can’t help but feel like there’s a huge issue that he’s not talking about. In fact, I don’t really hear anyone with any kind of power talking about it and it is troubling me greatly.

If the government really wants to have a proper conversation about the teacher recruitment and retention crisis and what makes working in some schools incredibly tough, then it needs to get to grips with the fact that schools in areas of deprivation are having to provide levels of pastoral support and “early help” that’s basically akin to social care - and all from their own budget. Teachers’ time, schools’ budgets and the focus on teaching and learning are all affected by this.

‘Unofficial’ support

Many schools that typically have high proportions of disadvantaged children are having to pick up on so many things that really should not be part of a school’s remit. Schools are having to fund their own in-house social workers, mental health support for parents, parent support workers, breakfast for children who don’t get it at home, counsellors, therapists, nurture groups, child protection officers - the list goes on.

Should a school really have to be spending tens of thousands of pounds to appoint their own social worker because their families need them but can’t get the support from social services? Should a school have to employ a full-time child protection officer because the child protection caseload is so overwhelming that managing it is a job in itself? Should schools need to employ staff who are purely there to help parents parent? Should schools have to provide their own counsellors and therapy sessions to help families and children make it through the week?

Schools are increasingly being told to give vulnerable families that don’t meet thresholds for support “early help”. What was once social care is seemingly becoming the role of schools and, at some point, schools are going to reach their limit on this.

And that’s not to mention the more “unofficial” support that teachers are providing. One teacher told me that her school buys sanitary products, new underwear, deodorant and washbags for pupils who need them. There was also the teacher who told me about children who had no food in the home so each day the staff would take it in turns to use their staff tokens in the canteen to get these children an extra meal to take home at night - not surprisingly, they dreaded the school holidays and the thought of not being able to give these children their extra meals.

‘It is tough, emotionally and financially’

Members of staff at one school fitted out entire families’ homes with essential appliances and wardrobes full of new clothes through donations and sourcing items themselves. Then there are the many schools that have members of staff knocking on doors in the morning just to get children into school in the first place. And you can bet your life that if one teacher tells me it’s happening in their school, it’s happening in others, too.

Providing such levels of pastoral support for vulnerable families and children can make focusing on teaching and learning tough and, of course, in a financial sense, spending ever-dwindling budget on this means that, ultimately, there’s less money available to support teaching and learning. That is the harsh reality. It is tough emotionally and it’s tough financially.

So, my request to Damian Hinds is to by all means get schools to make sure teachers aren’t triple-marking every scrap of work or completing endlessly long lesson plans for no real point, but don’t ignore the issue of what schools in disadvantaged areas are facing in terms of providing additional support. This is absolutely what makes this job tough for so many of us.

We do these things because, quite honestly, we are passionate about the children in our schools and want the absolute best for them, but something has got to give. If you really want to improve the outcomes for children in disadvantaged areas and to get more teachers to teach in these schools and stay there, then it’s time to get to grips with this situation.

I’ll take care of my school’s marking and feedback policy. Now, what is Damian Hinds going to do about investing more in pastoral and welfare support so that it’s not all left to schools?

Claire Lotriet is an assistant headteacher at Henwick Primary School in south-east London. She is a Tes leadership columnist and tweets @OhLottie

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