The National Workload Agreement - A New Deal for Teachers

Signed in January 2003, the National Workload Agreement on tackling workload and raising standards was a historic accord between government, employers and school workforce unions. It was the response to a report by PricewaterhouseCoopers which demonstrated that teacher workload was increasing and they were too often -involved in menial or inappropriate work.

Workforce reform within schools has now been taking place since 2003 and in the words of the UK Inspection body Ofsted “there has been a revolutionary shift in the culture of the school workforce.”

It introduced a series of significant changes to teachers’ conditions of service, the role of support staff and the ways schools are organised.

Working as the National Remodelling Team, Consulting Strategies were contracted in 2003 to develop and deliver a three phase change programme to support 150 local authorities and 23,500 schools. The changes were successfully implemented by September 2006 and regulatory body Ofsted recently reported that the programme was having a positive impact on teacher workload and standards of achievement in many schools.

Key drivers behind the programme’s success

• A movement by the government to allow schools to develop their local solutions to national challenges.
• Social partnerships between the staff representative bodies, unions and government.
• Agreement that the role of the school support staff should broaden to reduce the pressure on the teaching staff.
• The funding of a mixed discipline change team.
• The introduction of new tools and techniques that generated new ways of working and enabled the changes in culture and behaviour to develop.