The Report of the Teacher Workload Advisory Group, chaired by Professor Becky Allen has been published recently. Benjamin tweeted quotes from the report. This twitter thread is reproduced below with Benjamin’s permission.

Whilst revising my talk for Wednesday I’ve pulled together 10 interesting quotes from Professor Becky Allen‘s working group advisory report. I think there is still plenty of data nonsense around but there’s growing support for school leaders who decide to cut it right down. (1/10)

On predicted grades: ‘ Aside from their inevitable inaccuracy, predicted grades are rarely connected to processes that help students learn.’ (p14) (2/10)

On group analysis…’ Conducting analysis on pupil premium students or by gender might be straightforward, but is not an educationally meaningful way to determine interventions and actions because students within these groups do not always share similar needs.(p16)

On identifying students for ‘intervention’: it is not efficient for leadership to collect data on 1500 pupils in a school if they only plan to work with a small group of 30 pupils. In these instances, they should try to find alternative approaches to identify the…group(p16)4/10

On accountability: The exam performance of a class depends on many factors, most of which are outside the control of the person who happens to have them in their final year…pay progression should never be dependent on quantitative assessment metrics, (e.g.) test outcomes.’ 5/10

On performance management….Proxies for teaching quality: Pupil assessment scores, grades in lesson observations, and scores following book scrutiny are all quite poor proxies for whether or not somebody is teaching well. (p17) 6/10

Well-being ‘If teachers are held to account for things that are largely outside their own control… test performance or progress based on flight paths, it is not only unfair, but induces high levels of stress and is likely to lead to burnout + attrition from the profession. 7/10

On using commercially produced targets (see image below) 8/10

Reports: ‘Lengthy written reports to parents and carers are usually burdensome for teachers to produce, and there is insufficient evidence to suggest that this is the best or only way to engage parents and carers in education.’ (p20) 10/10

Here’s the whole report: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/754349/Workload_Advisory_Group-report.pdf (11/10!)

Further reading:

Teacher workload matter;-what does the report say about the role of governors

Important points of the report: Twitter thread by David Weston

Government Response