It’s no surprise that workload continues to be widely reported as unmanageable by teachers across Australia, particularly taking ongoing COVID disruptions into consideration. In the National Teacher Workforce Characteristics Report, published by AITSL in December 2021, 95% of full-time teachers reported working unpaid overtime during a typical week, with 42% of full-time teachers reported working for 60 hours or more during a typical week. The Australian Teachers’ Perceptions of Their Work in 2022 report, published by Monash University, goes on to detail widespread dissatisfaction amongst teachers with their workload, with over 85% of teacher respondents disagreeing or strongly disagreeing that they find their workload manageable.
So, what can be done to better support teachers in the face of unmanageable workloads? While there’s certainly no quick fix, reducing teacher time spent on administrative tasks is often highlighted as one piece of the puzzle. When teacher respondents were polled on potential solutions in the Monash Teachers’ Perceptions report, themes across responses focused on workload reduction, providing more time and reduced administration, with one survey respondent commenting “I love teaching and I love working with the children. But the admin burden is beginning to outweigh the teaching.”
With increasing pressure for teachers to be data-informed in their practice, this can lead to additional workload and administrative time spent on locating the relevant data, let alone bringing said data together in the one location to paint a more robust picture. It’s also fair to assume that a number of teachers - particularly those outside of STEM disciplines - have had limited to no formal training on data analysis, and therefore may find the task even more arduous and intimidating. We’ve recently surveyed a range of teachers on their confidence and capabilities with data analysis, and just over half of all respondents indicated that they were less than confident with quickly and easily locating data relevant to their practice. Further to this, over 40% of respondents reported that they had little to no confidence with triangulating data to measure the impact of their teaching.
When well-presented and effectively collated, data should be one step away from a decision or action that can positively impact teaching and learning outcomes. Intellischool Analytics and Pulse Alerts can go a long way to reducing time and mental energy spent on locating and triangulating data, which can in turn give teachers time back to spend on what matters most - focusing on students and teaching.
So, what can Intellischool do for your school to help reduce administrative workload? Each of the below features is designed to save teachers time on tracking down traditionally isolated data sets, and to make access to and analysis of data more timely, allowing teachers to act sooner rather than later on insights.
Having the right data is only the beginning of the story. The human element - teachers producing their own judgement calls and analysis of the data using their knowledge and expertise - is the crucial step to turning the data into meaningful changes to practice and improvements in teaching and learning outcomes.
We'd love to chat further with you about your school's context, and how we can support your teaching staff to reduce time spent on manually tracking down and analysing data sets. Click here to get in touch and find out more.
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