Teacher workload — is edtech saving the day?
The answer is we don’t know for sure — and we could do better
Most edtech founders are united in their ambition to bring positive change to education on a global scale — a goal that we share at Emerge Education. Still, it is useful now and again to remind ourselves just how much variety there is between different education systems and how different the challenges they face can be.
One issue that has been front and centre in Britain’s schools is excessive teacher workload. This is not something that is unique to the UK, but the evidence is clear: teachers here spend more hours working than in pretty much every other comparable country. It’s not easy to put a precise number on the problem: after all, there are differences between primary and secondary, large and small schools. But most assessments place the average teacher workload in the UK in the range of 48 to 52 hours week, with less than half of that time spent on actual teaching.
The problem
Research from the Education Policy Institute (2016) suggests that this puts the UK in third place for heaviest teacher workloads among developed economies (Japan is at the top of the list) — at 19% higher than on average. A fifth of surveyed teachers worked as much 60 hours a week or more. Unfortunately, this is not a case of ‘more means better’ — Finland, long considered one of the best performers in school education, has average workloads of just over 30 hours a week. And teachers in England agree the problem is getting out of hand, with 51% overall saying their workload was unmanageable.
The Department for Education’s Workload Challenge has shown that, while the number of teaching hours in the UK is comparable to schools elsewhere, teachers end up spending more time than they need to on marking, lesson planning, and admin tasks such as reporting or data management. Of course, these are things teachers have to do in other countries, too; but the general perception of regulatory requirements means manual marking, for example, is carried out in more detail than is actually required, or new lesson plans are prepared separately by each teacher and little collaboration or sharing happens between them. Now, a whole spate of policy initiatives is underway to cut the hours teachers spend on unnecessary tasks.
The solution?
So what’s the role of edtech in all of this? Unfortunately, it seems unlikely that teachers in England will be able to work 30 hours a week like their Finnish colleagues any time soon. The goal therefore must be to make better use of the time that they have, so that it is spent on tasks that contribute directly to learning outcomes.
The good news is that the top three areas of ‘unnecessary’ workload can all be addressed directly with the the help of technology.
At Emerge, we maintain a constantly updated database of high-quality edtech startups across the world. In the database alone, there are over 200 products for assessment, marking, or feedback; over 130 products related to lesson planning or UK curriculum-linked content, including game-based learning; over 125 scheduling, data management, LMS, and reporting tools for schools, which have the potential to save time spent on admin.
Sometimes this is as simple as digitizing a simple process that takes a long time (like contacting substitute teachers) or can be scaled across a school (sharing and collaborating on curriculum content) — taking what teachers are doing already and using technology to make the process quicker. Sometimes, products make possible practices that are not really feasible without tech. Peer-to-peer marking, for example, produces times more feedback than a teacher could hope to give in the same amount of tome and is pedagogically sound — but not really possible without that technology.
While some reasons behind excessive workloads are systemic — like perceptions of Ofsted requirements, — school leaders and teachers tell us edtech is part of the solution (when it is not part of the problem). And our data show there are hundreds of viable solutions in the market that address issues behind teacher workloads. But how to make sense of them all?
What — if anything — works?
Well, here’s the view from the top:
In so many other walks of life, modern technology has been a time-saver. But I know for many teachers it can sometimes feel like technology has had the opposite effect — actually adding to the work that needs to be done.
Of course, technology can never replace the role of the teacher in a classroom. And we know that there have been times in the past when technology has been used to promote some of the fads and gimmicks that have spread around the school system — despite a lack of evidence on how this will help children learn.
— Secretary of State for Education, in a speech to the Association of School and College Leaders on 10 March 2018
The key point here is the one about the lack of evidence around edtech’s impact. The focus on evidence will not be news to anyone following where the sector is headed, as initiatives like Educate or the upcoming EEF report on digital technology show. Some evidence exists already: the EPI report from 2016 suggested that ‘teachers who have pupils use ICT for class projects in all or nearly all lessons for the class considered work 4.6 hours less per week than those who at most occasionally adopt this approach’ (noting that this may relate to wider practices than purely marking or planning). And every teacher we have spoken to provided examples of edtech saving them and their schools tons of time — but not all edtech does so all of the time. There is also the danger of adding more technology than teachers can handle, of inadequate training or onboarding, or of purchasing products that are so complex or complicated that using them takes longer than the analogue way.
The question we asked ourselves was what, if anything, edtech companies could do to help teachers choose the right products.
Earlier this year, we reached out to 60 top edtech companies who were confident they had an impact on teacher workloads. We found that over 50% of those who responded had some form of evidence to back up their claims, but most of them relied on individual case studies. 15% of respondents used user surveys or other large-scale data analysis and just 10% had carried out research in collaboration with academics or using control groups.
The reason I point this out is not that this makes the other companies’ claims invalid — after all, this survey itself was as unscientific as it gets and the results are definitely not statistically significant. The case studies in question are based on real-world usage and we know many teachers who agree these products save them time. The main issue, however, is this:
When your best source of information on how much time you save is when a teacher mentions it in a review, it means you are not paying attention to it yourself — you are not purposefully measuring it. And it is hard to improve what you don’t measure.
Excessive teacher workloads are a major problem, especially in the UK. Effective use of technology can ease the burden, but to be truly effective edtech needs to be purposeful about understanding the impact it has. Only then can startups be sure their products are doing no harm and keep iterating to make any positive impact stronger. The good news is that many of the startups we talk to are showing a real interest in getting better at measuring their impact, on teacher workload as well as learner outcomes and more, whether through the Educate programme, their own collaborations, or internal data analytics.
The takeaway is this: there is plenty of testimony that edtech saves time, but little robust evidence, and this undermines trust in the sector.
To be successful, startups need to capture metrics about key outcomes, and right now they are not seeing the reduction of teacher workloads as one of them.
This needs to be done, systematically and at scale rather than through ad hoc case studies. Schools, in turn, can work with startups to make sure key data of that kind are recorded correctly, stored securely, and lead to real improvements down the line. What we’re seeing now is convergence between schools, startups, and the government on the need for better evidence — so there is hope for the teacher’s Sunday yet.
So here’s a few practical steps for the edtech entrepreneur eager to to help:
- Make teacher workload one of your key metrics and run larger-scale surveys with your users. Learn how much time they spend on the same tasks with and without your tool — and factor in the onboarding and training time. Then get to work to improve the metric further.
- If you can, consider running rapid cycle evaluations (RCEs) to get a more robust view of the time savings your product creates. You can find some useful guidance here and here, and later in the year we’ll share some more tips on how to get better data without a full-on RCT to run.
- Get involved with researchers who spend their lives designing good trials and convince them teacher workload is worth their attention. In the UK, EEF is a well-known, if selective, option. For a more DIY-like option, we encourage London-based startups to apply to the Educate programme which helps you learn how to design your own impact assessments — here’s a link to the application form.
