Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent steps she has taken to reduce teacher workload; and if she will make a statement.

The Department’s programme of work on removing unnecessary teacher workload aims to improve retention rates in schools, and enable teachers to focus on teaching. We continue to work extensively with unions, teachers and Ofsted to challenge and remove practices that create unnecessary workload for teachers and school leaders.

The action plan, published in February 2017 alongside the results of the 2016 Teacher Workload Survey, sets out action already taken and the next steps to continue to tackle this issue. We have committed to further targeted support for schools. We are now working with the schools sector to develop a practical workload reduction toolkit underpinned by a set of core principles. The toolkit, to be launched in Spring 2018, will provide head teachers, governors, initial teacher training providers and teachers with practical tools and evidence based advice.

We are also continuing our series of events, working with school leaders to showcase how some schools have reduced workload and to raise awareness of the three independent reports.

We will continue to improve the evidence on what drives excessive workload and what works to reduce it.