Staff Workload in Schools
Teacher workload is a persistent issue in education, one that needs continuous attention until real progress is made. We can support staff to have more balanced work-life balances and reduce their workloads to more manageable levels by using innovative AI tools which offer new opportunities to lighten the burden and improve work-life balance.
Over the last three years, each role has seen a record percentage of staff considering resigning more frequently. While for some roles in schools, the risk of resignation has improved so far in 2023/2024, the overall workforce picture shows a slight increase in the number of staff considering resigning constantly, often, or sometimes compared to 2022/2023.
When we look at the reasons why staff report they consider resigning “overwhelming workload” is the most reported reason, and “poor work-life balance” appears high up in the reasons why staff are considering resigning from their roles.
The correlation between how easy or difficult it is for staff to stay on top of their work responsibilities and the staff’s risk of resignation isn't as strong as correlations to other questions within our survey (which we explore in our Staff Retention in Academies Report). But we can see a relationship here between how difficult staff find it to stay on top of their work responsibilities and how likely they are to consider resigning.
What can be seen in the data in our Staff Retention in Academies Report highlights the need for supportive leadership and innovation in working practices, to support staff to feel more in control of their work-life balance and to support them.
The Adoption of AI in Schools
In recent years, Artificial intelligence technologies that can be used in education have developed quickly and to support teachers and pupils in a variety of ways such as Lesson planning, Content Creation, and Subject knowledge fact checking. A lot of this progress made in education uses of AI has been driven in part by advancements of generative AI. Tools can be used to perform a wide range of tasks including the creation of realistic content such as text, images, audio and video.
The DfE recognise that Artificial intelligence tools have the potential to provide different ways of learning and to help educators with lesson planning, marking and other tasks but highlight that the adoption of AI in education is still in an early and experimental phase. Stating that because of this the known benefits and limitations of such tools are widely unknown. AI is widely seen within education as an avenue of opportunity to support staff within the sector by reducing the workload burden on staff and providing a potential boost to student outcomes.
In this blog we will take a look at some of the potential tools that can be adopted for use in the classroom with the view of reducing the time it takes for staff to plan lessons and create lesson specific resources.
New Year, New Resources
Canva - Generating Content with Magic Write
Canva
Magic Write is the name of Canva's AI technology which generates quality content for you to use in your presentations, lesson plans, lesson handouts, letters to parents or anything in between based on a few keywords. The tool has been used by teachers who have highlighted that it supports them to create professional-looking presentations or handouts without having inspiration or time.
Canva is a tool that offers collaborative working options for teachers, who can collaborate with colleagues, students or even parents in real-time to edit presentations or resources instantly, making it easy to work on group projects or presentations.
ChatGPT
ChatGPT is widely known for its generative AI, and multi-faceted uses. OpenAi the company who created ChatGPT released a guide for teachers using ChatGPT in their classrooms, including suggested prompts, explanations of how ChatGPT works and its limitations.
They highlight these areas as potential uses of ChatGPT for School Staff:
- Role playing challenging conversations
- Building quizzes, tests, and lesson plans from curriculum materials
- Reducing friction for non-English speakers
- Teaching students about critical thinking
However the uses of ChatGPT can be extended to wider school tasks such as Policy development, advice and guidance, and prompts for learning opportunities.
Yippity Quiz
Yippity is a tool that has the capability to take text from a document, or a webpage and turn it into a quiz or string of questions. Using AI this tool takes the text entered, and generates sets of questions and answers that can be used to measure the understanding of pupils in classes.
You could use these to build flashcards, or incorporate these questions into your favourite quiz app. While this tool doesn't save as much time for teachers as some of the other resources we have shared, the uses of this generative AI tool can be used to support staff planning and by supporting pupil assessment and progression.
Copilot Education
Copilot is an excellent generative AI tool for teachers which can quickly put together handouts for pupils or lesson plans for teachers that cover specific topics, concepts, or subject areas.
Similar to ChatGPT the tool can be used to support lesson planning. The Copilot AI lesson planner is a great option for teachers for creating high quality, well-structured lesson plans for most subjects. This tool's main aim is to support teachers looking to save time and increase productivity. It has a wide range of versatile features and customisability that means this tool can be used for supporting teachers in a variety of settings and phases.
AudioPen
AudioPen is a slightly different AI tool to those we have looked at so far. AudioPen is a voice-to-text tool which is an AI-powered web app that you can use on your computer or phone to dictate your spoken language into text.
The app takes your spoken words and enhances them as it uses AI to generate the text, which you can edit as needed. This tool can be used to save time producing written documents, lesson plans, pupil progress reports, handouts, emails, and newsletter.
The tool offers a variety of customisable options and allows you to edit the generated text. The AudioPen tool is accurate in its use of spoken language to generate clear and succinct text that can be used for a variety of purposes.
Future of AI in Schools
New innovative solutions are emerging that are trying to disrupt the space. They try to tackle various elements of the teacher workload. It is an exciting time to be working in education with new tools and support becoming readily available with the goal of helping to make the lives of staff easier. Examples are EdSyl, looking to improve lesson planning, Summarize.tech, doing Summary teach videos for pupils, and Wolfram|Alpha, doing problem-solving AI.
Summer Reading!
As well as some exciting tools, we would also like to recommend some summer reading material on the topics of AI in the classroom and staff workload.
- The AI Classroom: The Ultimate Guide to Artificial Intelligence in Education by Dan Fitzpatrick, Amanda Fox and Brad Weinstein
In The AI Classroom you will find information on Prep and Edit Prompting Frameworks and make use of 40+ Prompts to support life in Education. The Book also has information on 20+ AI Tools to Aid UDL Guidelines and 30+ AI Tools Educators can use now to stay ahead in the ever-changing world of education.
In AI in Education you can learn exactly what AI is (and what it isn’t) and you can learn about how you can use AI in everyday classroom life. The book also explores all you need to know about data protection in the AI landscape. It does a fantastic job of explaining how AI can be an efficient part of your team and how you may make it a successful and productive addition to your work life.
AI in education goes into detail about how you as an educator can accelerate your students individually using the power of technology, while guiding you to empowering your students to take charge of their own learning journey using AI too.
- Teacher Workload: How to Master it and Get Your Life Back by Bruno Gomes
This book explores tried and tested strategies. The Author provides ‘real world’ tools that they themselves employ in the classroom Monday to Friday just like you. The book explores how you can tackle your ever-increasing workload, including both ways of reducing it and ways to improve your own productivity.
The author explains that it is possible to obtain healthy levels of occupational well-being and truly achieve a work-life balance. The books main aim is to help you to realise that it is possible for you to get your life back.
Want to learn more about Staff Workload and Retention?
If you would like to read more about Staff Retention in Academies and understand more about what is currently correlating with staff risk of resignation, or would like to learn more about Staff Health and Emotional Wellbeing, we recently published two reports which may be of interest for you or some of your colleagues.
If you have any questions about how you could explore these themes within your organisation please contact one of our members of staff for a demo of our platform and for more information surrounding surveying your School or Trust.
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