ATL

Northern Ireland

Working too hard? Help is at hand from ATL Northern Ireland, explains its director Mark Langhammer

Since the 2003 National Agreement, teachers in England and Wales have enjoyed the right to a work-life balance. They secured 10% timetabled time for planning preparation and assessment, an end to compulsory invigilation and a range of other measures aimed at focusing teachers on their core professional role.

In Northern Ireland, although the 2004 Curran Inquiry recommended the implementation of the substance of the National Agreement, it simply hasn't happened. Nonetheless, Northern Ireland teachers are not entirely without protection from unreasonable workload. That is why ATL has launched a workload campaign - to raise teachers' awareness of their current rights and to help them exercise those rights.

The 1998 departmental circular, Tackling bureaucratic burden, is little known among teachers but offers some protection.

The ATL campaign urges that teachers should not:

• write more than one report each year

• attend meetings more than once a week

• cover for absent colleagues more than once a week

• be bombarded with excessive communication

• engage in routine tasks.

The clerical and administrative tasks teachers should not routinely undertake include: collecting money; investigating pupil absences; bulk photocopying; administrating work experience, public examinations and cover for absent teachers; producing analyses of attendance; coordinating and submitting funding bids; ordering supplies and equipment; transferring pupil data into school systems; cataloguing materials or equipment, and more.

We hope this campaign will allow teachers to do what they do best - teach! To find out more, call 028 9078 2020 or contact Mark Langhammer.