With a new Ofsted grading system to process, a new inspection framework launching later this year, and potentially a new national curriculum too, it’s time the department for education got its ducks in a row on workload. We should all be holding them accountable for it.
Calls for the creation of new roles feel like an almost weekly occurrence. Hot on the heels of a sustainability lead, I now need to appoint an attendance champion. And somehow I have to balance that against the DfE’s workload reduction directive. I wonder: Are they even aware of the irony?
I head a very small school. In order to safeguard my very small team’s workload, all these new roles invariably end up with me or with a member of my vast office team – of one!
There are many schools like ours across the country, and this is one of the frustrating realities of leading one. Ofsted has the same expectations of us as any other school, and the DfE keeps adding to these expectations.
So, keen to ensure I had all these roles in place, I filed a freedom of information request with the department last November: Could they provide a list of the statutory roles we are required to have a named person for, and a list of the roles that it is good practice to have, but are not statutory?
After all, the DfE provides a simple list of the statutory policies schools must have. I thought, perhaps naively, that there might be a similar document for statutory roles. If one didn’t exist, my request would be all the impetus they needed to create one.
Or two, at most: statutory roles, and good practice roles. The workload implication for them was minimal, I reasoned, and could save leaders a lot of time searching for the information.
Two months later, I received this response: “The Department holds the information you requested, but it is being withheld.” The reason? “The Department is not required to provide information in response to a request if it is already reasonably accessible to you.”
If DfE holds the information, why not share it?
I just can’t fathom it. If the DfE holds the information, why not share it? Why would anyone at the DfE choose to create unnecessary additional workload?
Not so easily fobbed off, I pursued the case. (Yes, I did even more work, but I am headteacher scorned.)
Appended to the denial was a link to the government’s ‘Statutory Guidance for Schools’ webpage. So I selected each document on that page and ran them all though AI to see how long it would take to read and understand them. I omitted the programmes of work for the national curriculum and any documents that were not relevant for primary schools.
The result: between 189 and 261 hours, or between 29 and 40 days of uninterrupted work. In other words, I would need to spend an entire half term isolated from school – and not performing any of my statutory responsibilities – simply to get to grips with the full extent of those very responsibilities.
And that’s not all. ‘Working together to improve school attendance’, released last August, does not appear on this page. This is the document that calls for an attendance champion. To read and understand that document (once you’ve found it) would take an additional four and a half to six hours. Another school day gone.
This also begs the question: what other statutory documents have been omitted, causing a significant risk of statutory roles being missed?
There is more than a case of dissonance about workload from the DfE here. I don’t want to get hung up on the disregard for wellbeing manifest in the answer I received.
There is also a case to be made that their decision is simply wrong. The information is clearly not ‘reasonably accessible’ if accessing and processing it could take six weeks or more.
So I am appealing that decision, and I hope for a more positive outcome. Once I have a comprehensive list (or two), I can then look into the time required to carry all these roles out effectively.
Because as good leaders know, effective accountability is a two-way street.
Good article. I left a very successful career ten years ago because of all the top down drivel. I had no wish to just become a cog in a government machine of one size fits all. The DfE and Ofsted seems to be populated by those who.prefer to duck the teal job and lord it over others instead.
Well said. The dfe haven’t a clue, they have been overloading schools, classroom teachers and school leaders for decades simply adding straw by the bale onto the system. It’s a processes where the impact gets passed down and down through schools and on to students. Often it starts with some bright spark musing “Wouldn’t it be a good idea if ……….. ” thinking it would be so easy for teachers to do.
I’m sure all teachers took comfort from being trained how to spot terrorists and that we’re all SEND teachers now and being given targets that dictate 90% of the children in their top set classes must get A* or “9’s or whatever the next minister decides would get them noticed on their Thatcherite trail to number 10.
Require all dfe officials, ministers and OFSTED inspectors to spend a term a year in our shoes before they are allowed to make any decisions and then they might just get some idea why both teachers and students are voting with their feet.
I think your understanding of FOI legislation is a bit flawed. It isn’t on the DfE to help you interpret the information that they provide to you, they only have to make it available. I’d argue the exemption claimed here is correct as it is reasonably “accessible” – they have sent you a link and you have been able to access the information you have requested.
The “processing” point that you are arguing seems redundant as the legislation does not account for how long it would take a requester to read, interpret and understand the information, only how long it would take a public authority to provide you with the information. Yes, the information may take a long time for you to “process”, but if the information is *there* and you have been given immediate access via a link, then there is nothing further for them to release if they do not already hold it in the exact format you requested.
FOI does not exist in order for public authorities to digest and distil information for you, but as a route of access to the actual information.
Congratulations on this article. I also run a small school. A few years ago I spent most of my time teaching and fitted the admin around it. Now, despite huge admin input from other members of staff, I spend days on admin each week and my teaching time has been massively reduced – which further increases the stress on them.
Excellent. I look forward to hearing one day that the government has been legally challenged over duty of care….or lack of….to teachers. So many have left the job and or suffered mental and physical illness due to the horrendous, unachievable demands and resultant stress of ever changing and increasing government dictats and pressures…OFSTED also has so much to answer for imo…a bullying, hyper critical regime often staffed by failed teachers..again in my opinion and experience. A shocking way to treat dedicated professionals who are often victims of caring too much.