Making time for great teaching
Queensland Teachers' Journal, Vol 127 No 2, 11 March 2022, page no.8
“Great teaching transforms students’ lives. But preparing for great teaching takes time.”
In early February, public policy think tank the Grattan Institute released “Making time for great teaching: How better government policy can help”.
The QTU does not necessarily agree with all the solutions proposed, however the report does support the discoveries made in the QTU Workload Survey and opens the door for further discussions.
The report opens by clearly identifying an issue that teachers and school leaders know only too well: there is not enough time for teachers to teach.
The Grattan Institute surveyed 5,442 teachers and school leaders to help identify the obstacles to successful teaching. Alarmingly, 92 per cent of surveyed teachers said that they “always” or “frequently” do not have enough time to prepare well. The report then went further, proposing that governments should invest $60 million in pilot studies aimed at increasing the amount of time that teachers have to focus on their core business.
One of the survey respondents said: “Administration time takes up most of planning time – such as communication to parents, newsletters, displays, notes, permission slips, phone calls, and talking to students about wellbeing issues.”
This response highlights some of the factors that are preventing teachers from focusing on their core business: teaching, planning and assessing.
The inhibitors are not new to those in schools, however the report goes a step further by providing three reform directions, each providing possible solutions.
Let teachers teach
The first section outlines how the availability of support staff can reduce the pressures on teachers’ time, explicitly identifying how these roles should be utilised. The report asserts that support staff should take responsibility for tasks that do not require teacher expertise, such as playground duty, organisational matters, and paperwork requirements for extra-curricular activities. Further, it identifies the need for specialist support staff, such as speech therapists, disability experts and teaching assistants, to provide advice and support to teachers. The report also addresses the need to ensure “existing staff are being integrated effectively”, as ineffective use of current staffing does not reduce teacher workload.
Help teachers to work smarter
The familiar phrase “don’t reinvent the wheel” could sum up this section. The creation of resources such as C2C have made some steps towards implementing what is outlined, however it is not context specific. The report identifies the importance of having an effective whole school curriculum plan to allow teachers to focus on the "how" of teaching, rather than additional time identifying "what" to teach. A surprising finding of the survey is that more than half of those surveyed found collaborative planning time “unhelpful”. The issue is that collaborative planning time is being used for administrative tasks, rather than for effective planning as a cohort.
Rethink the way teachers’ work is organised
The implementation of this third section would require notable changes to industrial agreements and policies. There are significant differences between this section and the QTU policy. The report recommends two main reforms, the first being an increase in preparation time by two hours.
However, to reduce the cost of this, class sizes would need to increase to 28 and 31. There was less support for this among the Queensland responders than in other states. Secondly, the report seeks additional student free days, which would require teachers to return to school during the holiday period. While the solutions appear enticing, the trade-offs could be significantly less appetising.
Although not all of the solutions provided in the report are necessarily aligned with QTU policy, the message is clear: Teachers need more time to plan, assess and teach.