NEU encourages teachers to reduce marking and refuse mock inspections

As reported by The Times, a teaching union has encouraged its members to do less marking in a guide to help stressed teachers reduce their workload

Cutting non-teaching tasks and reducing workload is one of the National Education Union’s demands in its industrial dispute with the government, which has resulted in strikes.

A guide published on the union’s website has recommended teachers push back on demands for more marking.

The Reducing Accountability Workload in your Workplace guide also encourages teachers to resist mock Ofsted inspections, something the inspector itself has said is unnecessary for schools.

The guide says: “Although giving feedback to pupils is important, this does not necessarily mean written marking, or that it should be done in a prescribed manner, e.g. different colour pens. The school marking policy should be agreed and comply with the NEU guidance available on our website.”

According to the Department for Education, marking should be “meaningful, manageable and motivating” and feedback from teachers to pupils does not always need to be in written form.

The union guidance also encourages teachers to hold back the “tsunami” of data recorded about pupils, much of which “has little or no educational value”.

It says: “Data shouldn’t be collected ‘just in case’ or to be ‘ready’ for Ofsted. Nor should data be collected ‘just because you can’. It should have a clear purpose.”

The Department for Education’s 2019 workforce survey found that on average teachers in England worked 54 hours a week, while school leaders worked 60. This is believed to have gone up since the pandemic as teachers and pupils strive to catch up on lost learning.

In 2018, Damian Hinds, who was then education secretary, Amanda Spielman, the chief inspector of Ofsted and the heads of both school leaders’ unions wrote to schools to urge them to reduce the amount of time teachers spent on non-teaching tasks as part of addressing workload.

Kevin Courtney is joint general secretary of the National Education Union, which said that although giving feedback to pupils was important, “this does not necessarily mean written marking”

They pledged to support head teachers to cut “unnecessary work” so that staff could focus their efforts on teaching.

The NEU and three other education unions representing 400,000 staff are balloting members on co-ordinated strikes, which could affect all English state schools over the next six months.

Kevin Courtney, joint general secretary of the NEU, said: “The advice around marking is not about teachers doing less work but doing work that matters.”