Teacher Bulletin

In this edition of the Teacher Bulletin, you’ll find a selection of resources including the Education Staff Wellbeing Charter, an update on mental health and wellbeing support and the Workload Reduction Taskforce.

Update on the Education Staff Wellbeing Charter

Co-created with the sector, the Education Staff Wellbeing Charter sets out shared commitments to promote, protect and enhance the wellbeing of staff. The charter can be used to create a wellbeing strategy and schools are invited to sign up.

We’ve published an update showing the progress we’ve made against our pledges in the charter, including embedding staff workload and wellbeing considerations into Government decisions.

Mental Health and Wellbeing support

There are a range of wellbeing support options currently available, including:

• Access to free one-to-one professional supervision for school leaders through a funded scheme delivered by the Education Support charity. Over 1,400 leaders have benefitted from the support so far.
• A grant to fund school or college mental health lead training to embed an effective whole school or college approach to mental health and wellbeing.

We’re expanding the mental health and wellbeing support for school and college leaders, and from April 2024 will begin funding a three-year mental health and wellbeing support package. The package will provide professional supervision and counselling, ensuring more school and college leaders are able to access support.

Workload Reduction Taskforce

We know that heavy teacher workload is a longstanding and complex issue. Reducing workload requires a joint effort from the DfE, Ofsted and school and trust leaders, to find better ways of working and sharing good practice.

Our Workload Reduction Taskforce, made up of representatives from all four teaching unions, teachers, leaders, academics and other sector experts, have agreed their early recommendations. These initial recommendations, and the final recommendations which will come in April, will support our ambition to reduce working hours for teachers and leaders by five hours within the next three years.

Workload Reduction Toolkit

Developed with school leaders, the school workload reduction toolkit helps schools to review and reduce workload. In the toolkit, you’ll find resources to help you identify issues within your school, manage curriculum planning and review your marking practice – plus lots more! We’re currently improving the user experience of the toolkit, with a new service launching in March.

Bullying and harassment of school staff guidance

In the coming months, we’ll be working with experts and stakeholders to develop and publish guidance for schools on how to prevent and tackle bullying and harassment of school staff.

Advice from fellow teachers and school leaders

The DfE Teaching Blog is for teachers, by teachers. Covering everything from reducing teacher workload to working flexibly and supporting teacher wellbeing.

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We send out this Teacher Bulletin a few times per half term to school contacts in the Get Information About Schools database and individuals who choose to subscribe directly. It brings together some of the recent advice and information we’ve published. If you've received this Bulletin because a colleague has forwarded it to you and you'd like to get it directly, you can subscribe by following the link below.