Teacher survey will reveal ‘shocking’ workload, union predicts

25th February 2014, 5:42pm

A union leader is predicting that the long-awaited publication of an official survey of teacher workload will make for “shocking” reading.

Christine Blower (pictured), general secretary of the National Union of Teachers (NUT), said that she expected the 2013 Teacher Workload Diary would have bad news “in terms of the hours teachers work and the time spent on work that has little to do with preparing lessons”.

Earlier this week, a TES poll of 1,000 teachers revealed that a third had spent more than half of their half-term break on school work.

The union has been lobbying MPs over the delayed publication of the results of the official Department for Education (DfE) survey carried out in March 2013. The NUT said that analysis of the research had been completed last autumn.

Now the NUT is claiming a victory for its campaign after being told that the results will finally be released on Tuesday.

Ms Blower announced the news after talks today between DfE officials and the teaching unions. A series of further discussions will now take place.

But the NUT, which is planning a national strike on March 26, is pessimistic about the chances of the talks resolving its dispute over pay, pensions and working conditions.

“It has been agreed that a weekly series of talks will take place, which the NUT will fully engage in,” Ms Blower said.

“However, the government is still insisting that they will only be used to discuss the implementation of policy. To resolve our dispute we will need to discuss the direction of government policy, which we believe is wrong.”

The NUT’s position has been weakened by the NASUWT’s decision to pull out of what had been joint strike action.

But Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said: “We’re pleased the government agreed to a detailed series of discussions about the issues teachers are most concerned about in terms of pay, working conditions and school organisation.

“We look forward to making quick progress on some of these matters, and believe this will improve children’s achievement and enable schools to operate in a 21st-century education environment.”