Teachers bound up with red tape
PRIMARY teachers spend nearly a day a week on paperwork – rather than teaching children to read, write and count.
Secondary teachers spend more time on official forms each week than teaching history or geography.
Liberal Democrat schools spokesman David Laws said: “Teachers are struggling under a mountain of paperwork, resulting from incessant Government directives and diktats.”
He added: “Each hour spent wading through red tape is time that should be used to improve standards in the classroom.”
The statistics, published in the Teachers’ Workloads Diary Survey, showed that it is only in English and maths that teachers spend more time on teaching than admin.
Up to a third of children are leaving primary school unable to use capital letters and full stops correctly. Youngsters about to leave junior school at 11 were found to have little grasp of even basic grammar.
