Administrative Burdens (Schools) (Hansard, 10 April 2001)

§ Jacqui Smith

The Government are fully committed to reducing administrative burdens in schools in order to allow teachers to concentrate on teaching and raising standards. Examples of our action to do so include:

We have guaranteed to cut by a third the number of documents, and by a half the number of pages, that the Government send automatically to schools during this school year—in the first two terms of this school year, we will have halved the paperwork we sent to schools, compared with the first two terms last year.

We have radically simplified this year's Standards Fund—we have replaced bidding, claiming and reporting with a single expenditure returns sheet; we have allowed schools to vire funds between almost all grant headings; we have allowed schools to carry funds over to the end of the school year; and we have introduced monitoring against existing targets.

We have placed model schemes of work on the DfEE website to underpin all National Curriculum subjects at Key Stages 1–3—they are entirely voluntary and teachers may adopt them or adapt them as they wish. These have now been joined by over 1,000 useful lesson plans and resources in a further effort to reduce paperwork and make the necessary lesson preparation as straightforward as possible.

We have developed new ICT resources, including the launch of:

(a) EASEA—a full electronic in-tray and document archiving service for head teachers, teachers and governors that now has 7.000 registered users
(b) TeacherNet—a single web page offering links to the full range of educational resources on the internet
(c) an internet based "A-Z" of school leadership and management—an electronic encyclopaedia for heads with succinct, practical guidance on a wide range of topics, full search facilities, and links through to reference material on organisational and legal issues, and examples of good practice.

We have harnessed DfEE and Cabinet Office resources to simplify some of the paperwork that schools complete—the first results of this joint project are set out in the "Making a Difference: Reducing School Paperwork" report. This shows potential savings for a typical school of over 200 hours every year—equivalent to more than a month's work for one person; and across the school system 4.5 million hours could be saved annually.

We are reducing data collection and avoiding data request duplication. We have set up a high level group with head teacher representation to review all new and existing DfEE data collection. This approach has been extended to involve QCA, Ofsted and TTA. We are also developing a common set of data for schools that, from 2002, will be collected once only and shared electronically by all authorised parties and agencies.

Teacher workload is being reduced with 44,000 FTE extra non-administrative support staff, including teaching assistants and learning mentors, since 1997. Within this, we have provided funding to recruit and train an additional 20,000 FTE teaching assistants between 1999 and 2002.

We have introduced a £35 million Technology Package to enable schools to invest in new computers for management and administration, provide training and install software to introduce a seamless system that will save the average school five days work per year.

We have reviewed Ofsted procedures. Ofsted inspections can be a source of pressure on teachers and we have taken steps to reduce that pressure through the reduced notice period; shorter 'light touch' inspections for the most effective schools; and extending the maximum interval between inspections to six years.

We have provided specific help for small schools. In 2000, we set up two grants within the Standards Fund to assist small schools and we have now merged these into a single Small Schools Fund. The Fund provides support for small schools to help them with the extra difficulties that administration and collaboration present. The Fund is worth £80 million in 2001–02 and is guaranteed for at least three years.