Nick Clegg says teachers should be free from ‘runaway train of bureaucracy’

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/oct/22/nick-clegg-teachers-bureaucracy-education

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The Liberal Democrat leader is to step up the coalition’s charm offensive with teachers when he announces a new initiative to free them from a bureaucracy that he says has left them feeling undervalued and overworked.

In a speech on Wednesday, in which he will hail the contribution of public sector workers, Nick Clegg will say that the government is to establish a “workload challenge”, to examine ways to ease the burden on teachers.

The initiative, supported by the education secretary, Nicky Morgan, is the latest example of the coalition’s attempt to improve relations with the teaching profession after the abrasive era of Michael Gove.

Teachers will be invited to set out the causes of “unnecessary workload” on the website of the Times Educational Supplement, which is running a campaign on the issue.

A panel led by teachers will examine the best ideas next year before working with Ofsted on how to deliver a series of reforms to the workload of teachers.

Clegg is due to say: “I believe it’s time for us to stop that runaway train of bureaucracy in its tracks, giving our teachers more time to do what they do best: creating and planning the best possible lessons and experiences for our children.

“In government, we’ve already done this for businesses: freeing up money and resources for millions of companies. We want to do the same for the public sector – starting with teachers.”

He will say: “Some people are still under the misguided impression that it’s a profession built around short days and long holidays. But talk to a teacher and they’ll tell you about their working week of 50 hours or more. They’ll also tell you how much of this time they feel is wasted on unnecessary processes, box-ticking and form-filling.

“We’re talking about hours spent struggling to stay on top of piles of incident reports, overdetailed lesson-plan templates, health and safety forms, departmental updates, training requests and so on, that threaten to engulf them every week.

“Not to mention the reams of additional evidence which teachers pull together because of a long-held belief that Ofsted inspectors want to see everything written down.”