The NASUWT teachers’ union has instructed members to limit their working time as part of industrial action starting from September 18.
Industrial action includes only attending one hour-long meeting a week outside of pupil session times and refusing to be directed to undertake extracurricular activities and midday supervision.
Members will also not do work-related tasks in their lunch breaks, on weekends or bank holidays and will refuse to cover some absences and not cooperate in mock inspections (see full list below).
The union, which represents 280,000 teachers in the UK, previously voted in favour of the government’s 6.5 per cent teacher pay deal but had previously warned industrial action would go ahead over workload.
Today, NASUWT national action committee is instructing members in eligible schools to “limit their working time” from mid-September onwards.
Writing for Schools Week, the union’s general secretary Patrick Roach, said the action is designed to “help bring downward pressure on workload and working hours”.
He said the action “will not disrupt pupils’ education – instead, it is focused on the bureaucracy and non-teaching tasks which we know are doing so much to increase workloads, contributing to teacher stress and burnout, and distracting teachers from being able to focus on teaching and learning. Our members will still teach and prepare for lessons”.
The National Education Union and school leaders’ union NAHT called of strikes after members accepted the pay deal, while ASCL halted their strike ballot.
NASUWT’s action short of strike:
- Refuse to undertake inappropriately directed duties outside school session times
- Refuse to be directed to undertake extracurricular activities
- Refuse to be directed to undertake midday supervision of pupils
- Refuse to be directed to undertake any work-related tasks or activities during their lunch break
- Refuse to be directed to undertake work-related tasks or activities on weekends or Bank Holidays
- Refuse to undertake any other duties during Planning, Preparation and Assessment (PPA) time
- Refuse to cover for absence other than in circumstances that are not foreseeable
- Refuse to undertake routine administrative and clerical tasks
- Refuse to co-operate with mock inspections
- Refuse to cooperate with inappropriate planning, marking and data management policies, practices and initiatives that have not been workload impact assessed and the subject of consultation or agreement with the NASUWT
We have a 2 week half term in October. I believe part of the 90 minute staff meetings each week must be working to compensate for that. Plus we have 9 twighlight staff meetings until 6pm. In addition we have 3 morning briefings but those are within the normal working hours. I wonder what the union’s advice to me would be?
Teacher contracts say the Teachers Standards must be met. Therefore, it is not just being asked to do these tasks you mention, teachers will have to do them regardless to meet their contractual obligations. It is not possible to meet the Standards in less hours. If you want to fight work load, change teachers contracts where it says the standards must be met.