Many ATL/AMiE reps and members have taken the lead in tackling work-life balance in their schools and colleges with great success. You and your colleagues will know what works best in your school or college, and what is practically possible.
You don't need to know all the answers to start asking questions and to initiate a conversation with colleagues about workload and its impact.
Reports from the DfE workload groups
In the wake of the Government’s Workload Challenge, which asked education staff about workload issues and identified how unmanageable workload has become, the DfE set up three groups to address the key issues of lesson planning, marking and data management.
The reports from these groups can provide a useful starting point when talking about workload issues in your workplace. You can find the reports in the Campaign Toolkit at the bottom of this page - along with ATL's guidance on the reports for teachers and for leaders.
Starting a campaign
As you gather evidence of workload levels using the resources provided – as well as evidence of the impact it has on staff and students/pupils - it is worth reflecting on the weight of that evidence, the strength of staff feeling and the likelihood of success or partial success in achieving change together.
The webpages in this section will take you through a number of ways in which you can identify the problems you face and the likelihood of success. While we focus on workload here, these methods can be used to tackle a variety of issues in your workplace.
Your ATL rep
The first step is to discuss the issue with your ATL rep. If there is no ATL rep or contact in your school/college, decide who will take on this role (this can be more than one person) and email the membership team to let them know.
For guidance or support on the role of rep or with electing reps in your workplace, ATL has an organising team - please provide your name, workplace postcode and contact details when you use the form so we can get back to you.
Campaign Toolkit
- ATL's guide to Tackling Workload Together
- ATL's guide to the DfE workload group reports - for teachers
- ATL's guide to the DfE workload group reports - for leaders
- Eliminating unnecessary workload around marking
- Elminating unneccessary workload associated with data management
- Eliminating unnecessary workload around planning and teaching resources