Government told to cut teachers' workload

Teachers would have up to eight hours cut from their working week under proposals unveiled by the profession's pay review body yesterday.

Teachers would have up to eight hours cut from their working week under proposals unveiled by the profession's pay review body yesterday.

In its long-awaited report on reducing teachers' workload, the pay review body is calling for the setting of a target of an average 45-hour week for teachers within four years. At present, primary school teachers work on average 52.8 hours a week, and secondary school teachers do 51.3 hours.

The recommendation is the main finding from the report, ordered by the Government in response to union threats of a nationwide work-to-rule over workload.

The report also called for a contractual limit on the amount of hours per year teachers could be asked to cover for absent colleagues, and guaranteed time off during the school day for marking and preparation.

However, it stopped short of agreeing to teachers' demands in England and Wales for a 35-hour week and a maximum limit to the amount of time they spend in front of a class per week.

The report was welcomed as "a critical bit of the jigsaw" by an aide to Estelle Morris, the Secretary of State for Education, which would pave the way for consultations with the teachers' unions. "Let's be absolutely clear," he said. "This is a substantial package which has been very, very carefully thought through."

He welcomed the fact that the report rejected the "clocking-on, clocking-off" approach of the demand for a 35-hour week. The report dismissed the notion as "unusual for professional people".

Instead, it had advocated a target of an average 45-hour week within four years, with a 48-hour week within two years as an interim objective. The 45-hour week spread over the 39 hours of term time is the equivalent to professionals with just six weeks' holiday a year working a 38-hour week.

The review body also backed the employment of extra classroom assistants to bring about the proposed reduction in working hours, and published a list of 25 tasks – such as administering exams and collecting dinner money – which could be transferred from teachers to them.

But the report received a lukewarm reception from teachers' leaders.

Eamonn O'Kane, general secretary of the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers, said: "The report is underwhelming.

"Everything will now depend upon the willingness of the Government to enter into a genuine dialogue on significant changes to the teachers' contract."

Stephen Timms, the Minister for School Standards, speaking to The Independent, said that the proposals in the report "do seem to be driving in the right direction". Ways of reducing teachers' workload would be piloted in 32 specially selected schools from September.

He said he hoped that these would lead to "a real sense among teachers that they're getting more help, better technological support and a better trained support staff working with them, and that the consequences of that will be a reduction in their workload measured in hours".

Ministers have set a target of increasing the number of administrative assistants in schools by 20,000 in this Parliament. Figures published last week showed that the number has risen by 26,000 in a year.