Use an INSET day to focus on reducing workload

Case study

School details

School name: Kensington Primary School

Location: Newham

Phase: Primary

Number of pupils: 700

Contact details: Email Headteacher Ben Levinson at info@kensington.ttlt.academy

Impact and outcomes

We have relentlessly removed unnecessary tasks or reduced them to their essential components, especially when the justification for doing them was ‘that’s what everyone else does’ or ‘that’s what OFSTED, DfE or some other body want’. The marking policy (now included in this service’s school workload reduction toolkit) was one outcome of this wider work.

As a result, in our most recent wellbeing survey, 95% of our staff believed they completed their work ‘on time’ and, consequently, over 70% answered ‘very much so’ when asked ‘do you have a life outside work?’

Background from Ben Levinson, Headteacher

At Kensington, reducing workload has been an obsession from day one. This INSET day was entitled ‘What gets in the way of teaching?’

We have been through countless iterations since and it has been a key component in the development of our culture and ethos.

It is borne from two beliefs:

teaching 30 children, 5 lessons per day, 5 days per week, is a full-time job in itself
inspiring teachers have the time and energy to focus on what matters and have a life outside of school

Create an agenda for the INSET day

The agenda for the first INSET day was simple:

Staff worked in groups to come up with a list of the things that get in the way of them doing the best possible job of teaching our pupils.
They looked at a ‘long list’ of the school’s initiatives. For example, things like how we teach reading or mark pupils’ work, the housepoints system, attendance initiatives, interventions.
They then decided what worked and what didn’t.
We then categorised these and worked to remove everything that didn’t have a direct impact on our pupils.

Act on what you find out

Inevitably, marking was a key part of this. Our approach to marking was based on research from the likes of the Education Endowment Foundation and John Hattie. So we encouraged and supported staff to mark more in the lesson – as immediate feedback can have a greater impact. We also ensured that marking was there for the children, not for myself, my senior team, or anyone else.

This marking policy was one outcome of this wider work.

Follow up with staff

We followed up the INSET day with a simple ‘We said, We did’ table to show that we had listened and acted to remove the barriers to effective teaching.